1. A method for identifying persistent hosts in a dynamically configured network, comprising: establishing a plurality of records, each record stored on a storage medium and describing one or more characteristics of a persistent host on the network and one or more detected vulnerabilities of the persistent host, wherein the persistent host corresponds to a previously observed host instance on the network; receiving a snapshot of the network having at least one currently existing host instance for an unknown host on the network, the unknown host having a dynamically assigned IP address assigned on an as-needed basis from a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server; matching one or more characteristics of the currently existing host instance to the characteristics of a persistent host described in at least one of the records; identifying the unknown host associated with the currently existing host instance to be the persistent host described by the matching record; retrieving from the matching record one or more of the detected vulnerabilities of the persistent host corresponding to the currently existing host instances; and applying one or more security decisions for the currently existing host instance based on the retrieved detected vulnerabilities of the persistent host corresponding to the currently existing host instance.