Automation begins with keeping track of your assets

Automating effectively requires you to know what is connected to your network and what patches it needs, and to be able to push patches on to the right device at the right time. Before you can manage anything, you need to know what hardware and software you have and where it is. Then you need to take control of it, remotely …

[rodtrent]

Re: Automation begins with keeping track of your assets

Great topic. We've found that few organizations really take licensing into account and it creates an enormous amount of unneeded costs. Our AppClarity product solves this issue:

http://www.1e.com/softwareproducts/appclarity/index.aspx

[Mike 137]

Are these your only assets?

Not a bad notion - but it doesn't cover the whole ground by a long chalk. Your most important assets are your business information. These need to appear on the inventory too, otherwise you're just talking about empty boxes.

ISO 27001/2 requires you to identify your "most important information assets", but how can you do that unless you know about all of them? For much too long we have concentrated on the technologies at the expense of their business purpose. Information is what matters to your business - your IT is just a tool for making use of it.