Patents by Inventor Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss
Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
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Publication number: 20240111513Abstract: Adapting automatic software update behavior for virtual desktop infrastructure deployed endpoints includes detecting a request for services of a threat management facility for an enterprise network that originates from a compute instance embodied as a virtual machine instantiated from a versioned software template, and updating software on the compute instance based on a determination of availability of updated software for the compute instance and an update pause parameter indicating that updating software for virtual machines instantiated from the versioned software template is permitted for the compute instance.Type: ApplicationFiled: October 4, 2022Publication date: April 4, 2024Inventors: Jonathan Francis Caine, Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Timothy Rayment
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Publication number: 20230412641Abstract: A threat management facility for an enterprise provides security services to a number of virtual compute instances executing on a remote cloud computing platform. In order to prevent or reduce an accumulation of records for abandoned compute instances, each new virtual compute instance is explicitly identified by a user (and optionally a template), and then compared to existing records to identify possible redundancies, which can be deleted or otherwise managed.Type: ApplicationFiled: May 18, 2022Publication date: December 21, 2023Inventors: Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Jonathan Francis Caine, Timothy Rayment
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Publication number: 20220131836Abstract: Threat detection instrumentation is simplified by providing and updating labels for computing objects in a context-sensitive manner. This may include simple labeling schemes to distinguish between objects, e.g., trusted/untrusted processes or corporate/private data. This may also include more granular labeling schemes such as a three-tiered scheme that identifies a category (e.g., financial, e-mail, game), static threat detection attributes (e.g., signatures, hashes, API calls), and explicit identification (e.g., what a file or process calls itself). By tracking such data for various computing objects and correlating these labels to malware occurrences, rules can be written for distribution to endpoints to facilitate threat detection based on, e.g., interactions of labeled objects, changes to object labels, and so forth.Type: ApplicationFiled: October 4, 2021Publication date: April 28, 2022Inventors: Andrew J. Thomas, Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Daniel Salvatore Schiappa, Kenneth D. Ray
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Patent number: 11140130Abstract: Threat detection instrumentation is simplified by providing and updating labels for computing objects in a context-sensitive manner. This may include simple labeling schemes to distinguish between objects, e.g., trusted/untrusted processes or corporate/private data. This may also include more granular labeling schemes such as a three-tiered scheme that identifies a category (e.g., financial, e-mail, game), static threat detection attributes (e.g., signatures, hashes, API calls), and explicit identification (e.g., what a file or process calls itself). By tracking such data for various computing objects and correlating these labels to malware occurrences, rules can be written for distribution to endpoints to facilitate threat detection based on, e.g., interactions of labeled objects, changes to object labels, and so forth.Type: GrantFiled: September 27, 2018Date of Patent: October 5, 2021Assignee: Sophos LimitedInventors: Andrew J. Thomas, Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Daniel Salvatore Schiappa, Kenneth D. Ray
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Patent number: 10951642Abstract: A threat management facility that remotely stores global reputation information for network content can be used in combination with a recognition engine such as a machine learning classifier that is locally deployed on endpoints within an enterprise network. More specifically, the recognition engine can locally evaluate reputation for a network address being accessed by an endpoint, and this reputation information can be used to dynamically establish a timeout for a request from the endpoint to the threat management facility for corresponding global reputation information.Type: GrantFiled: January 13, 2020Date of Patent: March 16, 2021Assignee: Sophos LimitedInventors: Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Emile Marcus Kenning, Mark David Harris
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Patent number: 10778725Abstract: Threat detection instrumentation is simplified by providing and updating labels for computing objects in a context-sensitive manner. This may include simple labeling schemes to distinguish between objects, e.g., trusted/untrusted processes or corporate/private data. This may also include more granular labeling schemes such as a three-tiered scheme that identifies a category (e.g., financial, e-mail, game), static threat detection attributes (e.g., signatures, hashes, API calls), and explicit identification (e.g., what a file or process calls itself). By tracking such data for various computing objects and correlating these labels to malware occurrences, rules can be written for distribution to endpoints to facilitate threat detection based on, e.g., interactions of labeled objects, changes to object labels, and so forth.Type: GrantFiled: January 16, 2019Date of Patent: September 15, 2020Assignee: Sophos LimitedInventors: Kenneth D. Ray, Simon Neil Reed, Mark D. Harris, Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Andrew J. Thomas, Robert W. Cook, Dmitri Samosseiko
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Patent number: 10728269Abstract: A security agent conditionally hooks a process for malware monitoring based on a persistent hook state for the process that may be stored, for example, in a process cache. When a process launches in a backoff state indicating that the process previously crashed after hooking, the security agent may further conditionally hook the process based on a reputation of the process or any other relevant contextual information.Type: GrantFiled: May 3, 2018Date of Patent: July 28, 2020Assignee: Sophos LimitedInventors: Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Mark D. Harris
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Patent number: 10673902Abstract: Threat detection instrumentation is simplified by providing and updating labels for computing objects in a context-sensitive manner. This may include simple labeling schemes to distinguish between objects, e.g., trusted/untrusted processes or corporate/private data. This may also include more granular labeling schemes such as a three-tiered scheme that identifies a category (e.g., financial, e-mail, game), static threat detection attributes (e.g., signatures, hashes, API calls), and explicit identification (e.g., what a file or process calls itself). By tracking such data for various computing objects and correlating these labels to malware occurrences, rules can be written for distribution to endpoints to facilitate threat detection based on, e.g., interactions of labeled objects, changes to object labels, and so forth.Type: GrantFiled: April 26, 2018Date of Patent: June 2, 2020Assignee: Sophos LimitedInventors: Andrew J. Thomas, Mark D. Harris, Simon Neil Reed, Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Kenneth D. Ray
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Publication number: 20200153849Abstract: A threat management facility that remotely stores global reputation information for network content can be used in combination with a recognition engine such as a machine learning classifier that is locally deployed on endpoints within an enterprise network. More specifically, the recognition engine can locally evaluate reputation for a network address being accessed by an endpoint, and this reputation information can be used to dynamically establish a timeout for a request from the endpoint to the threat management facility for corresponding global reputation information.Type: ApplicationFiled: January 13, 2020Publication date: May 14, 2020Inventors: Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Emile Marcus Kenning, Mark David Harris
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Patent number: 10594717Abstract: A threat management facility that remotely stores global reputation information for network content can be used in combination with a recognition engine such as a machine learning classifier that is locally deployed on endpoints within an enterprise network. More specifically, the recognition engine can locally evaluate reputation for a network address being accessed by an endpoint, and this reputation information can be used to dynamically establish a timeout for a request from the endpoint to the threat management facility for corresponding global reputation information.Type: GrantFiled: May 3, 2018Date of Patent: March 17, 2020Assignee: Sophos LimitedInventors: Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Emile Marcus Kenning, Mark D. Harris
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Patent number: 10558800Abstract: Threat detection instrumentation is simplified by providing and updating labels for computing objects in a context-sensitive manner. This may include simple labeling schemes to distinguish between objects, e.g., trusted/untrusted processes or corporate/private data. This may also include more granular labeling schemes such as a three-tiered scheme that identifies a category (e.g., financial, e-mail, game), static threat detection attributes (e.g., signatures, hashes, API calls), and explicit identification (e.g., what a file or process calls itself). By tracking such data for various computing objects and correlating these labels to malware occurrences, rules can be written for distribution to endpoints to facilitate threat detection based on, e.g., interactions of labeled objects, changes to object labels, and so forth.Type: GrantFiled: May 3, 2018Date of Patent: February 11, 2020Assignee: Sophos LimitedInventors: Kenneth D. Ray, Daniel Salvatore Schiappa, Simon Neil Reed, Mark D. Harris, Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Andrew J. Thomas, Robert W. Cook, Harald Schütz, John Edward Tyrone Shaw, Anthony John Merry
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Publication number: 20190342313Abstract: A security agent conditionally hooks a process for malware monitoring based on a persistent hook state for the process that may be stored, for example, in a process cache. When a process launches in a backoff state indicating that the process previously crashed after hooking, the security agent may further conditionally hook the process based on a reputation of the process or any other relevant contextual information.Type: ApplicationFiled: May 3, 2018Publication date: November 7, 2019Inventors: Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Mark D. Harris
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Publication number: 20190342312Abstract: A threat management facility that remotely stores global reputation information for network content can be used in combination with a recognition engine such as a machine learning classifier that is locally deployed on endpoints within an enterprise network. More specifically, the recognition engine can locally evaluate reputation for a network address being accessed by an endpoint, and this reputation information can be used to dynamically establish a timeout for a request from the endpoint to the threat management facility for corresponding global reputation information.Type: ApplicationFiled: May 3, 2018Publication date: November 7, 2019Inventors: Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Emile Marcus Kenning, Mark D. Harris
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Patent number: 10382459Abstract: Threat detection instrumentation is simplified by providing and updating labels for computing objects in a context-sensitive manner. This may include simple labeling schemes to distinguish between objects, e.g., trusted/untrusted processes or corporate/private data. This may also include more granular labeling schemes such as a three-tiered scheme that identifies a category (e.g., financial, e-mail, game), static threat detection attributes (e.g., signatures, hashes, API calls), and explicit identification (e.g., what a file or process calls itself). By tracking such data for various computing objects and correlating these labels to malware occurrences, rules can be written for distribution to endpoints to facilitate threat detection based on, e.g., interactions of labeled objects, changes to object labels, and so forth.Type: GrantFiled: May 2, 2018Date of Patent: August 13, 2019Assignee: Sophos LimitedInventors: Mark D. Harris, Simon Neil Reed, Kenneth D. Ray, Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Andrew J. Thomas, Robert W. Cook
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Publication number: 20190149580Abstract: Threat detection instrumentation is simplified by providing and updating labels for computing objects in a context-sensitive manner. This may include simple labeling schemes to distinguish between objects, e.g., trusted/untrusted processes or corporate/private data. This may also include more granular labeling schemes such as a three-tiered scheme that identifies a category (e.g., financial, e-mail, game), static threat detection attributes (e.g., signatures, hashes, API calls), and explicit identification (e.g., what a file or process calls itself). By tracking such data for various computing objects and correlating these labels to malware occurrences, rules can be written for distribution to endpoints to facilitate threat detection based on, e.g., interactions of labeled objects, changes to object labels, and so forth.Type: ApplicationFiled: January 16, 2019Publication date: May 16, 2019Inventors: Kenneth D. Ray, Simon Neil Reed, Mark D. Harris, Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Andrew J. Thomas, Robert W. Cook, Dmitri Samosseiko
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Patent number: 10225286Abstract: Threat detection instrumentation is simplified by providing and updating labels for computing objects in a context-sensitive manner. This may include simple labeling schemes to distinguish between objects, e.g., trusted/untrusted processes or corporate/private data. This may also include more granular labeling schemes such as a three-tiered scheme that identifies a category (e.g., financial, e-mail, game), static threat detection attributes (e.g., signatures, hashes, API calls), and explicit identification (e.g., what a file or process calls itself). By tracking such data for various computing objects and correlating these labels to malware occurrences, rules can be written for distribution to endpoints to facilitate threat detection based on, e.g., interactions of labeled objects, changes to object labels, and so forth.Type: GrantFiled: May 2, 2018Date of Patent: March 5, 2019Assignee: Sophos LimitedInventors: Kenneth D. Ray, Simon Neil Reed, Mark D. Harris, Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Andrew J. Thomas, Robert W. Cook, Dmitri Samosseiko
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Publication number: 20190028438Abstract: Threat detection instrumentation is simplified by providing and updating labels for computing objects in a context-sensitive manner. This may include simple labeling schemes to distinguish between objects, e.g., trusted/untrusted processes or corporate/private data. This may also include more granular labeling schemes such as a three-tiered scheme that identifies a category (e.g., financial, e-mail, game), static threat detection attributes (e.g., signatures, hashes, API calls), and explicit identification (e.g., what a file or process calls itself). By tracking such data for various computing objects and correlating these labels to malware occurrences, rules can be written for distribution to endpoints to facilitate threat detection based on, e.g., interactions of labeled objects, changes to object labels, and so forth.Type: ApplicationFiled: September 27, 2018Publication date: January 24, 2019Inventors: Andrew J. Thomas, Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Daniel Salvatore Schiappa, Kenneth D. Ray
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Publication number: 20180324220Abstract: Threat detection instrumentation is simplified by providing and updating labels for computing objects in a context-sensitive manner. This may include simple labeling schemes to distinguish between objects, e.g., trusted/untrusted processes or corporate/private data. This may also include more granular labeling schemes such as a three-tiered scheme that identifies a category (e.g., financial, e-mail, game), static threat detection attributes (e.g., signatures, hashes, API calls), and explicit identification (e.g., what a file or process calls itself). By tracking such data for various computing objects and correlating these labels to malware occurrences, rules can be written for distribution to endpoints to facilitate threat detection based on, e.g., interactions of labeled objects, changes to object labels, and so forth.Type: ApplicationFiled: May 2, 2018Publication date: November 8, 2018Inventors: Kenneth D. Ray, Simon Neil Reed, Mark D. Harris, Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Andrew J. Thomas, Robert W. Cook, Dmitri Samosseiko
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Patent number: 10122687Abstract: Threat detection instrumentation is simplified by providing and updating labels for computing objects in a context-sensitive manner. This may include simple labeling schemes to distinguish between objects, e.g., trusted/untrusted processes or corporate/private data. This may also include more granular labeling schemes such as a three-tiered scheme that identifies a category (e.g., financial, e-mail, game), static threat detection attributes (e.g., signatures, hashes, API calls), and explicit identification (e.g., what a file or process calls itself). By tracking such data for various computing objects and correlating these labels to malware occurrences, rules can be written for distribution to endpoints to facilitate threat detection based on, e.g., interactions of labeled objects, changes to object labels, and so forth.Type: GrantFiled: September 14, 2014Date of Patent: November 6, 2018Assignee: Sophos LimitedInventors: Andrew J. Thomas, Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Daniel Salvatore Schiappa, Kenneth D. Ray
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Publication number: 20180276378Abstract: Threat detection instrumentation is simplified by providing and updating labels for computing objects in a context-sensitive manner. This may include simple labeling schemes to distinguish between objects, e.g., trusted/untrusted processes or corporate/private data. This may also include more granular labeling schemes such as a three-tiered scheme that identifies a category (e.g., financial, e-mail, game), static threat detection attributes (e.g., signatures, hashes, API calls), and explicit identification (e.g., what a file or process calls itself). By tracking such data for various computing objects and correlating these labels to malware occurrences, rules can be written for distribution to endpoints to facilitate threat detection based on, e.g., interactions of labeled objects, changes to object labels, and so forth.Type: ApplicationFiled: May 3, 2018Publication date: September 27, 2018Inventors: Kenneth D. Ray, Daniel Salvatore Schiappa, Simon Neil Reed, Mark D. Harris, Neil Robert Tyndale Watkiss, Andrew J. Thomas, Robert W. Cook, Harald Schütz, John Edward Tyrone Shaw, Anthony John Merry