Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Asset discovery is the ability to provide visibility of all devices located within an organization with limited or no human interaction. Most organizations often attempt to manually create a list of their assets in a shared document, such as a spreadsheet, or a small database, making changes whenever a new device is either added or removed. This process is deceptively manageable when organizations are relatively small and not that complex.

One of the most critical factors to effective cybersecurity is time. The longer a vulnerability remains unaddressed, the more opportunity you give hackers to get into your system and wreak havoc. Think about it like this: imagine that you leave your laptop bag sitting on the passenger seat of your car. If you run into the store to get milk but forget to lock the door, the odds are that the laptop bag will still be there when you get back.

Unless you know what IT assets you have and how important each of them is to your organization, it’s almost impossible to make strategic decisions about IT security and incident response. Indeed, inventory and control of enterprise assets is so important that it is the first in the set of Critical Security Control (CSCs) published by the Center for Internet Security (CIS).

Modern organizations depend upon a dizzying array of software: operating systems, word processing applications, HR and financial tools, backup and recovery solutions, database systems, and much, much more. These software assets are often vital for critical business operations — but they also pose important security risks.

Asset inventory is a significant part of a comprehensive security plan for all organizations. After all, if you do not know what assets you have, then you cannot manage them. Even a small company can amass a surprisingly large amount of assets. It is no surprise that accounting for all of these assets can be like chasing a moving target, as new and old assets must be accounted for, and conversely, decommissioned assets must also be removed.

Guessing how many marbles are in a jar is either a fun carnival game (pick the average based on the wisdom of the crowd) or a math problem involving orb volume, cylinder volume and the estimated space between marbles. You can also just count the marbles. Unfortunately, when it comes to identifying the number of devices connected to your network, none of these approaches works – although quasi-manual counting remains all too common.