Virtual Machine Security Monitoring via Baseline Trend Analysis
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Solution Overview
Problem
In untrusted cloud computing environments, existing security and integrity measures are ineffective due to uncertainty about physical hardware access and interactions between virtual and host machines, posing challenges in maintaining security and integrity.
Innovation Solution
A system and method for monitoring virtual machines in cloud environments, which includes a baseline module to generate baseline files, a trends module to analyze these files, and a benchmark module to detect differences and generate reports on security and integrity changes, enabling continuous monitoring and threat identification.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If known security measures are implemented in untrusted cloud environments, then security and integrity monitoring is attempted, but effectiveness is reduced due to uncertainty about physical hardware access and virtual machine interactions
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the security monitoring system into distinct functional modules: a baseline module that captures system state information, a storage module that preserves historical baselines, and an analysis module that compares current states against stored baselines. This segmentation allows each module to operate independently, reducing the impact of hardware uncertainty on overall system effectiveness while maintaining comprehensive monitoring capabilities.
2Reliability
If continuous monitoring of virtual machines is performed through baseline generation and comparison, then security threats are identified timely, but system resources are consumed continuously
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements periodic action by generating baseline files at scheduled intervals rather than continuously. The system captures system state information at predetermined time points, stores these baselines, and performs comparative analysis periodically. This approach maintains timely threat identification while significantly reducing system resource consumption compared to continuous monitoring, as the baseline module only activates at scheduled intervals to collect and compare system states.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems for monitoring a virtual machine in a cloud computing environment are disclosed. The systems include a baseline module residing on the virtual machine configured to retrieve baseline information from the virtual machine and create a plurality of baseline files and a trends module configured to retrieve a number of baseline files, comparatively analyze the number of baseline files and generate at least one trends report based on the comparative analysis of baseline files.