DETAILED ACTION
1. This office action is in response to application 19/193,340 filed on 4/29/2025. Claims 1-20 are pending in this office action.
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
2. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
3. In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by US 11,182, 691 (hereinafter Zhang).
As for claim 1 Zhang discloses: 1. A computer-implemented method for classifying a data store in a computing environment, the computer-implemented method comprising:
identifying a first sampling criterion used for classification of the data store with respect
to a target data type during a previous scan of the data store (See column 5 lines 50- column 6 line 5 note the system allows for customization and reuse), wherein the data store stores a set of data objects (See column 5 lines 5-20 and column 22 line 65 column 23 the system uses and allows users to create datastores); selecting a second sampling criterion, from a plurality of sampling criteria, based on the first sampling criterion used during the previous scan (See column 34 line 65- column 35 line 10 and column 35 line 27-46 note the system uses sampling based on selected criterion); deploying one or more scanners configured to select a subset of data objects, from the set of data objects stored in the data store, based on the second sampling criterion (See column 41 lines 35-55 note the scanners are configured based on the delimiter and subsequent scans are performed based on offset), wherein the subset comprises some, but not all, of the set of data objects (See column 34 line 65- column 35 line 10 note the system uses sampling/subsets) ; generating a classification result based on a number of instances of the target data type in the subset of data objects (See column 26 lines 5-25 note the will generate a classification and save the recipe); and performing a computing action based on the classification result (See column 9 lines 20-25 and column 26 lines 45-65 note actions are performed based on the invocation of the system).
As for claim 2 the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated and further Zhang discloses: wherein the second sampling criterion is different than the first sampling criterion (See column 32 lines 30-55 note the system will pick different criterion based on the optimization strategy).
As for claim 3 the rejection of claim 2 is incorporated and further Zhang discloses: wherein the second sampling criterion comprises at least one of: a random sampling of the set of data objects from the data store; a time stamp-based sampling of the set of data objects based on time stamps representing a last modified time for each data object a directory-based sampling of the set of data objects that is based on a directory structure in the data store; a metadata-based sampling of the set of data objects that is based on metadata of the set of data objects, the metadata comprising one or more of object type, object tags, or object size; or an exclusion-based sampling criterion (See column 19 lines 30-50 note in a statistics based sampling subsets are randomly selected).
As for claim 4 the rejection of claim 2 is incorporated and further Zhang discloses: wherein the first sampling criterion selected a different subset of the data objects in the data store than the subset of data objects selected based on the second sampling criterion (See column 34 line 57- column 35 line 25 note the system can divide a set into N subsets).
As for claim 5 the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated and further Zhang discloses: wherein generating the classification result comprises classifying the data store as having a threshold correspondence to the target data type (See column 31 line 50- column 32 line 22 note the system will cluster patterns above a threshold number of instances).
As for claim 6 the rejection of claim 5 is incorporated and further Zhang discloses: wherein classifying the data store comprises determining that the subset of data objects includes a threshold number of instances of one or more pre-defined data patterns representing the target data type (See column 31 line 50- column 32 line 22 note the system will cluster patterns above a threshold number of instances).
As for claim 7 the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated and further Zhang discloses: wherein the computing environment comprises a cloud (See figure 2 and column 11 lines 13-33 note the system can use a traditional or public cloud system).
Claims 8 and 9 are computing system claims substantially corresponding to the method of claims 1 and 3 and are thus rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claims 1 and 3.
As for claim 10 the rejection of claim 8 is incorporated and further Zhang discloses: wherein the first sampling criterion and the second sampling criterion are selected based on user input (See column 7 lines 10-25 note the user can submit requests).
Claims 11-13 are computing system claims substantially corresponding to the method of claims 5-7 and are thus rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claims 5-7.
As for claim 14 the rejection of claim 11 is incorporated and further Zhang discloses: wherein first distribution of data objects is based on file type defined in metadata of the data objects (See figure 31 note consistency metadata and column 43 lines 40-50 note metadata can be used at every step of the process).
Claims 15-20 are computer readable medium claims substantially corresponding to the method of claims 1-7 with Zhang disclosing: identify a subject vulnerability signature representing an access path to target data in a computing environment (See column 51 lines 20-30 note paths, filenames are used to uniquely identify data). Therefore claims 15-20 are rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claims 1-7.
Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ELIYAH STONE HARPER whose telephone number is (571)272-0759. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Friday 10:00 am - 6:00 pm.
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/Eliyah S. Harper/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2166 January 23, 2026