Previously, in the era when all systems were big, bulky, and onsite, asset management was a relatively straightforward task for IT teams – a limited number of items located within a fixed area meant all items were known, and access could be easily controlled. With a shift in emphasis to portability with the rise of laptops, tablets and phones, as well as workers being increasingly remote, the challenge in tracking all items and managing them for the optimum levels of security has grown exponentially, according to an article in Continuity Central. As each new device represents a potential security threat, IT teams are being forced to significantly increase their efforts to track and manage devices, to ensure anything which is lost, misplaced, or otherwise out of control can have its access quickly revoked.
To help ensure your asset management strategy is acceptable, organizations should:
- Perform inventory checks to confirm the number of devices connected to your networks
- Identify unknown or unexpected devices within that inventory
- Implement threat-hunting practices to ensure vulnerabilities are rapidly identified and patched
- Regularly repeat and update all of the above, to continuously check for emerging threats from new devices
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