An accurate asset inventory is one of the most important parts of an effective OT vulnerability management program. This is because it provides situational awareness and can lead to the identification of threats and vulnerabilities.
As an increasing number of devices are connected, the ability to quickly identify assets is becoming a critical issue. Without this data, it is impossible to build a comprehensive and sustainable OT vulnerability management program.
A single tool can provide complete asset visibility and manage critical assets. Asset visibility includes the location of each asset as well as information about its owner. By adding this information to the inventory, users can make more informed decisions about patching and hardening.
An OT asset management system can provide a single view of the entire OT environment. It allows users to understand the total amount of OT assets, including all hardware, software, and network connections. The inventory can then be used to detect and respond to threats and vulnerabilities.
Asset discovery in OT and ICS environments can be complex. Due to the diversity of computing platforms and network topologies, there are often many ways to reach a single endpoint. In addition, the devices may have proprietary interfaces, which makes it difficult to understand how they are configured.
The first generation of ICS detection products, relying on passive sniffing, were not always effective. Because they required by a hardware appliance to scan the network, they were largely unreliable. Moreover, ICS protocols were encrypted, making deep-packet inspection impractical.