If you run your own business, sooner or later you will have to solve the problem of creating an IT infrastructure. The larger the infrastructure, the more pain points associated with putting it in order. Otherwise, the company bears high risks associated with finances, customer confidence, and further development. It is actually not enough to simply purchase servers and equipment and hire a staff of IT specialists. IT asset discovery tools can help you.
5 problems with IT assets
1. High load on the IT service
Due to the increasing complexity of the IT infrastructure, many issues can occur unexpectedly. This is why, despite the lack of time to thoroughly address the issue, many administrators do not take advantage of the opportunity to improve their performance. Most company leaders do not invest in developing a service that can help their employees solve the problems they encounter. Instead, they often use existing tools and solutions that can be easily updated.
2. Downtime due to equipment failures
Even if the infrastructure was built to withstand the inevitable failures, it can still get hit by various problems due to its complexity. Having the right tools can help minimize these issues and improve the overall efficiency of the system.
3. Everyday disruptions in the workplaces of users
The management of information technology infrastructure is a common issue that many companies face. Aside from the lack of a clear separation of duties, many other factors such as the security structure and processes can also cause issues.
4. "Freezing" of applications and programs
In most cases, the failure of an application or a system to operate properly is caused by factors that are beyond the control of the individual users and the company. These include the age of the hardware and the incompetence of certain IT personnel. To minimize the number of disruptions, companies are regularly monitoring and inventorying their systems. They also use powerful anti-virus programs and other tools to prevent unauthorized access.
5. Savings on the purchase of new IT assets
Over-reliance on outdated technology and inadequate maintenance leads to the failure of many systems and equipment. The result is that the company's employees spend more time dealing with issues and breakdowns than they should.
Knowing the number of working computers and equipment in your organization and how they affect your company's profitability is very important. Such data can be obtained using special products such as IT asset discovery.
What is asset discovery in IT?
IT Asset Discovery is software that automatically collects and updates the information about your company's infrastructure.
Fact Check: Asset Discovery tools will give you comprehensive asset visibility & control that will make the end-point security and compliance effective. IT asset management tools, techniques, and data will help businesses with maximizing the ROI on IT assets. According to MarketsAndMarkets, the Software asset management market is expected to reach $2.32 billion by 2022. It is growing at a CAGR of 14.8% during the period of 2017 to 2022.
The goal of IT asset discovery is to find, catalog, and monitor all the assets of an organization. This process helps maintain security and compliance, make better decisions and reduce costs. It includes hardware, installed software, SaaS software.
There are 2 types of IT asset discovery - active and passive. Let’s look closer at them.
What is an active IT asset discovery?
Active or standard asset discovery approach involves going over a network and trying to ping each of the devices that come into contact with it. This method would typically involve a lot of configuration. Although this approach works well in most cases, it can be insecure and can affect the network in a lot of cases.
What is a passive IT asset discovery tool?
The other approach is called the passive asset discovery syslog. This involves taking a log message and storing it in a log management solution. The live data would be considered as live data, as it would have to be continuously updated by the log management solution in order to create the asset. With the advent of the passive asset discovery method, organizations can now create assets from both live and historical data. This method allows them to pull in data from various sources, such as archived syslog messages.
One example would be allowing organizations with different geographic regions to copy over the archived logs from their local syslog to a central repository. This method would allow the head office to identify potential security breaches.
What Is IT Asset Discovery Tool Used For?
The tools used for monitoring and identifying assets related to your information technology infrastructure. To be more specific we can notice several useful features as:
- Monitoring and risk scoring
- Troubleshooting network devices
- Identification of hacking attempts, leaked data
- Discovering vulnerable and outdated software
- Pen testing tools
- Mapping network devices
- Standardizing and centralizing the processes of multiple site management
- SQL queries and PRTG sensors for monitoring databases and detailed statistics
- Internal audit compliance
- Managing software licenses
- Gather information about device status, packet loss, response times
How the Asset Discovery Process Works
The concept of asset discovery is a process that enables enterprises to find the location and status of their non-physical assets. These include devices and software that are not yet physically tied to a physical building.
Until recently, the asset discovery process was mainly focused on finding physical products or installing software. With the advent of cloud computing, it has become possible to discover and monitor the various components of an organization's infrastructure.
We prepared a typical comprehensive enterprise IT discovery process:
The asset discovery process can be performed in various ways depending on the type of hardware and software products that an organization has.
Also, it is worth mentioning that there are two types of asset discovery systems: manual and automated. Automated asset discovery systems pull information about the assets into the hands of the appropriate software agents. These systems do not require the owner or employees to do anything. Manual asset discovery systems usually use humans to input data about an asset. In other words, both types of asset discovery systems operate by broadcasting the details of the assets to the appropriate software agents or tags. The only difference is in “hands” behind the process.
Here is how data flow happens with data discovery tool in an organization:
Benefits of IT Asset Discovery
- A modern asset discovery tool simplifies the process of cataloging and creating inventory of all your company's technology assets. It eliminates the need to manually mark and tag all your devices.
- Asset discovery tools make it simple to create a centralized database of all your company's assets. This ensures that the data is always up-to-date and accurate, which can help improve the efficiency of your processes.
- An asset discovery tool can detect anomalous behavior in assets and provide a better understanding of their health. It can also reduce risk and improve the efficiency of your processes.
- The data gathered by an asset discovery tool can be combined to create rich and customized reports that can be used to populate various asset dashboards.
- Asset discovery tools help network administrators identify and gain a better understanding of the various aspects of their networks.
Some of the best tools available in the market can help ease the work of monitoring the various assets in an organization. Let’s check on them for acquiring, optimizing, and maintaining IT assets at low costs.
Top IT asset discovery tools
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
Best for: small to large organizations
The SolarWinds Network Performance monitor is a tool that automatically discovers the available network devices and visualizes their critical path. Its comprehensive monitoring system gives users a complete view of how the network is behaving. The tool can be updated automatically once you add or remove a component of the network. It also has various predefined options that allow users to manage the network efficiently.
Features:
- Performance Monitoring
- Alerting
- Improvement Suggestions
- Multi-Network Capability
- Performance Baseline
- Data Visualization
- Path Analysis
Free Trial: 30-days
Free/Open-Source: No
Pricing: on request
Cacti
Best for: Small and medium companies, startups
It is commonly used to monitor devices on a network. Cacti is a tool that uses this protocol to discover and manage various assets on a network. It does so by creating a list of all devices and then registering changes to it. Cacti is an open-source project that provides a front-end tool for monitoring and managing various devices. It also comes with a back-end component called RDDTools.
Features:
- Performance Management
- Monitoring
- Application Management
- Charting
- User Management
Pricing: free and open-source
Paessler PRTG Network Monitor
Best for: Medium and large business organizations
PRTG Network is an asset discovery tool that combines various features such as a device monitor, traffic analyzer, and server status manager. It allows you to keep track of the network's health.It is a cloud-based tool that can be used to monitor and manage a network. Its discovery process keeps you informed about all the changes happening in the network.
Features:
- Performance Monitoring
- Alerting
- Improvement Suggestions
- Multi-Network Capability
- Performance Baseline
- Data Visualization
- Path Analysis
- Dashboards and Visualizations
- Alerts and Notifications
- Reporting
Free Trial: 30-days
Free/Open-Source: No
Pricing: $1,750/about 50 devices
Zenmap
Best for: Small and medium businesses
Zenmap is a graphical front end that works seamlessly with Nmap, its security auditing tool. It collects all the details of the devices and networks in the system, including their OS, model, IP address, and port status.
Features:
- Issue Tracking
- Detection Rate
- False Positives
- Automated Scans
- Compliance Testing
- Perimeter Scanning
- Configuration Monitoring
- Manual Application Testing
Pricing: Free and open-source
Spiceworks Help Desk
Best for: small and medium businesses, large organizations
The Spiceworks asset management system can identify the locations of all the devices on your network. It can also report the details of the operation of the various equipment. The tool can also identify and upgrade the existing assets when an application overloads the network. You can also print out reports that detail the usage of the devices.
Features:
- Ticket Prioritization
- Ticket Notifications
- Knowledge Base
- Reporting
- Dashboards
- Time Tracking
- Access & Usability
- Mobile
- Self Service
- Active Directory
Pricing: Free and open-source
Netsparker
Best for: medium and large organization
The Netsparker asset management system helps organizations identify and secure applications. It does so by automatically scanning and reporting security issues. It uses a dynamic scanning approach to discover and analyze all aspects of a web asset.
Features:
- Dashboard & Reporting
- Alerting
- API/Integrations
- Vulnerability Assessment
- Security Auditing
- Reporting and Analytics
- Issue Tracking
- Static Code Analysis
- Vulnerability Scan
- Manual Testing
- Test Automation
- Compliance Testing
- Black-Box Scanning
- Detection Rate
- Black Box Testing
Free Trial: No
Free/Open source: No
Pricing: on request
ImmuniWeb Discovery
Best for: small to large businesses, government, and regulated industries
ImmuniWeb is a leading provider of application security solutions. Most of its clients are in regulated industries such as healthcare and e-commerce. The ImmuniWeb AI Platform is built on the latest AI and Machine Learning technology. It enables fast and intelligent automation of Dark Web Monitoring and Attack Surface Management.
Features:
- Application Security
- Compliance Management
- Risk Management
- Web Threat Management
- AI / Machine Learning
- Compliance Reporting
- Threat Intelligence
- Asset Discovery
- Asset Tagging
- Vulnerability Assessment
- Alerting about exposed code repositories, cloud, and IoT.
- Dark Web and Deep Web monitoring for fast reaction.
- Detecting more than 200 CMS & frameworks (free, commercial) plus 200,000+ plugins.
Free Trial: Yes
Free/Open source: No
Pricing: $ 299/Per Month (Corporate), $ 999/Per Month (Corporate PRO)
Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner
Best for: small businesses, individuals
The company's flagship product, the Acunetix, is a digital asset management software that enables organizations to easily manage and secure various forms and passwords. This asset discovery tool can detect various types of security issues, such as unauthorized access and configuration changes.
Features:
- Dashboard & Reporting
- Alerting
- Reporting and Analytics
- Vulnerability Scan & Assessment
- Security Auditing
- Issue Tracking
- Performance and Reliability
- Detection Rate
- Automated Scans
- Black Box Testing
Free Trial: No
Free/Open-Source: No
Pricing: on request
As you can see, the choices in the market are endless. The main thing is to choose the functionality and price range that suits your business.
To wrap up
IT asset discovery refers to the process of keeping track of and cataloging various types of hardware and software assets of a company. The software asset discovery tools help in identifying and tracking the appropriate assets for various purposes. Therefore, using them is essential for reducing the cost of maintaining these assets.
