METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR COLLECTING INFORMATION REGARDING A DEVICE OR A USER OF A DEVICE

A system is provided for collecting information regarding a device or a user of a device. Information is received from a discovery agent, which collects information when activated. The system determines a discovery rule to be applied to the information received from the discovery agent. The discovery rule is then applied to the information received from the discovery agent. The discovery agent and the discovery rule are separate code sequences or separate programs. A discovery engine receives the collected information from the discovery agent and applies the discovery rule to the collected information. The system may periodically activate the discovery agent to collect information. A typical system receives information from multiple discovery agents and applies multiple discovery rules to the received information. Each discovery agent includes a unique associated identifier. Additionally, the information collected by each discovery agent has an associated tag that identifies the data.