DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 8/11/2023 are
in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure
statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim(s) 1,7,8,14 and 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Blass (US 20190342325 A1, published Nov.7, 2019) in view of Palliyil (US 20050132206 A1, published Jun.16, 2005) further in view of Beijing Knownsec Information Technology Co Ltd (CN 114422253 A, published Apr.29, 2022).
As per claim 1,
Blass discloses a method … segmenting the vulnerability scan using at least one selected from a group consisting of: parallel segmentation and iterative segmentation [Blass, par 0014, “network scans only permitted for certain departments or portions of the network being scanned, “]; wherein the parallel segmentation is configured to implement respective segments of the vulnerability scan at predetermined times to reduce downtime or performance impact of the data processing environment [Blass, par 0043, “scans network(s) when there is relatively low network traffic and at the times and in the manner permitted by the scanning scheduler. At block 412, the volume of traffic in a network is measured at certain times. “].
Blass does not disclose but Palliyil discloses generating a queue of a plurality of workloads for execution in a data processing environment, wherein the plurality of workloads are organized in the queue based on respective priority values, and wherein a vulnerability scan is queued with a lower priority value [Palliyil, par 0089, “the resource is considered a low priority resource for virus scanning. In one implementation (A), an identifier of each low priority resource is added 380 to a queue of resources to be scanned during spare processor cycles “].
Therefore, it would have been a prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Blass so that the queue of workloads in a data processing environment are generated and organized by priority as taught by Palliyil. One would have been motivated to do so to ensure critical workloads are completed with minimal delay to support stability in system operations.
Blass and Palliyil do not disclose but Beijing Knownsec Information Technology discloses and wherein the iterative segmentation is configured to repeatedly segment the vulnerability scan until respective segments of the vulnerability scan can be implemented in the data processing environment without any downtime or performance impact [Beijing Knownsec Information Technology Co Ltd, pg 5 , “The task scheduler 120 is configured to divide each scan task by taking a URL as a unit “]; and implementing the segmented vulnerability scan in the data processing environment [Beijing Knownsec Information Technology Co Ltd, pg 6, “distributes the task URLs to the scanner with processing capacity “].
It would have been a prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Blass in view of Palliyil so that the iterative segmentation is configured to repeatedly segment the vulnerability scan until respective segments of the vulnerability scan can be implemented in the data processing environment without any downtime or performance impact and implement the segmented vulnerability scan in the data processing environment as taught by Beijing Knownsec Information Technology. One would have been motivated to do so in order to ensure continuous availability of the data processing environment and prevent operational disruptions.
As per claim 8 and 15, the limitations of claims 8 and 15 correspond to the features of claim 1 is/are rejected for the same reasons
As per claim 7, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated herein.
Blass does not disclose but LI discloses further comprising dynamically fragmenting scans based on running and scheduled workload capabilities extracted from interfacing with process mining or process orchestration systems [Beijing Knownsec Information Technology Co Ltd, pg 5 , “The task scheduler 120 is configured to divide each scan task by taking a URL as a unit “], [Beijing Knownsec Information Technology Co Ltd, pg 6, “distributes the task URLs to the scanner with processing capacity “].
Therefore, it would have been a prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Blass so that scans are fragmented based on running and scheduled workload capabilities extracted from interfacing with process mining or process orchestration systems as taught by LI. One would have been motivated to do so in order to optimize system resource utilization and efficient system performance.
As per claim 14, the limitations of claim 14 correspond to the features of claim 7 is/are rejected for the same reasons
Claim(s) 2,9 and 16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Blass in view of Palliyil and Beijing Knownsec Information Technology further in view of Chan (US 20090276781 A1, published Nov.5, 2009).
As per claim 2, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated herein.
Blass does not disclose but Chan discloses further comprising: in response to a receiving a high priority job while implementing the segmented vulnerability scan, pausing the segmented vulnerability scan and resuming the segmented vulnerability scan in response to completion of the high priority job [Chan, par 0038, “ If the threshold has not been exceeded, processing progresses to a block 514 where the backfill job is returned to the job queue. If the threshold has been exceeded processing progresses to a block 516 where the processing that has been performed on the job is stored. After the processing of the backfill job has been stored “].
Therefore it would have been a prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Blass so that when a high priority job is received; the current vulnerability scan is paused and resumed after the high priority job is completed as taught by Chan. One would have been motivated to so in order to ensure that the system prioritizes a high priority job, so that time-sensitive and/or critical operations complete without interruption.
As per claim 9 and 16, the limitations of claims 9 and 16 correspond to the features of claim 2 is/are rejected for the same reasons.
Claim(s) 3,10 and 17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Blass in view of Palliyil and Beijing Knownsec Information Technology further in view Mandagere (US 20210117549 A1, published Apr.22, 2021).
As per claim 3, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated herein.
Blass does not disclose but Mandagere discloses further comprising: in response to a server of the data processing environment having no foreseeable downtime to run the segmented vulnerability scan, generating a virtual machine (VM) using a snapshot of the server and implementing the vulnerability scan on the VM [Mandagere, par 0016, “snapshot may be restored to a temporary environment of the storage system to create a restored instance of at least a portion of the selected backup snapshot. A vulnerability scan may be performed on the restored instance”].
Therefore, it would have been a prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Blass so that when a server of the data processing environment is down; a virtual machine is generating using a snapshot of the server and a vulnerability scan is implemented on the VM as taught by Mandagere. One would have been motivated to do so in order to efficiently identify vulnerabilities in a VM before restoring the system’s services.
As per claim 10 and 17, the limitations of claims 10 and 17 correspond to the features of claim 3 is/are rejected for the same reasons
Claim(s) 4,11, and 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Blass in view of Palliyil and Beijing Knownsec Information Technology further in view of HE (US 20210226978 A1, published Jul.22, 2021).
As per claim 4, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated herein.
Blass does not disclose, but HE discloses further comprising assigning weighted values to incoming jobs so that a security scan becomes a dynamic process [HE, par 0044, “The vulnerability scan tasks in the scan task pool are executed in descending order according to the execution priority weights. “].
Therefore, it would have been a prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Blass so that the incoming jobs are assigned weighted values making the security scan process more dynamic as taught by HE. One would have been motivated to do so in order to ensure that the scan tasks with the greatest security significance are executed first, so that the most serious vulnerabilities are identified as early as possible rather than waiting behind less critical scan tasks.
As per claim 11 and 18, the limitations of claims 11 and 18 correspond to the features of claim 4 is/are rejected for the same reasons
Claim(s) 5,12 and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Blass in view of Palliyil, Beijing Knownsec Information Technology and HE further in view of Soubramanien (US 9141794 B1, published Sept.22, 2015).
As per claim 5, the rejection of claim 4 is incorporated herein.
Blass does not disclose but Soubramanien discloses wherein the security scan dynamically fragments and works around other system workloads so that it is not relegated to off hours ([Soubramanien, lines 21-23, col 2],” FIG. 6 is a flow chart depicting a method for preemptively-scheduled and opportunistic malware scanning in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. “).
Therefore, it would have been a prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Blass so that the security scan dynamically fragments and works around other system workloads so that it is not relegated to off hours as taught by Soubramanien. One would have been motivated to do so in order to optimize scanning efficiency by dynamically balancing the scanning task against active system workloads.
As per claim 12 and 19, the limitations of claims 12 and 19 correspond to the features of claim 5 is/are rejected for the same reasons
Claim(s) 6,13 and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Blass in view of Palliyil and Beijing Knownsec Information Technology further in view of Hosseini (US 20230262085 A1, published Aug.17, 2023).
As per claim 6, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated herein.
Blass does not disclose, but Hosseini discloses wherein parallel scanning is enabled to allow separate system scans to work in parallel based on network and system resource requirements and existing workloads [Hosseini, par 0011, configured to communicate with two or more scanner instances in parallel. “].
Therefore, it would have been a prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Blass so that parallel scanning is enabled to allow separate system scans to work in parallel based on network and system resource requirements and existing workloads as taught by Hosseini. One would have been motivated to do so in order to optimize system resource utilization and efficient system performance.
As per claim 13 and 20, the limitations of claims 13 and 20 correspond to the features of claim 6 is/are rejected for the same reasons
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Saipratap Prem whose telephone number is (571)270-0894. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 8 a.m. -4 p.m..
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Jung Kim can be reached at (571) 272-3804. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/SAIPRATAP PREM/Examiner, Art Unit 2494
/JUNG W KIM/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2494
Prosecution Insights