Cyber asset attack surface management (CAASM) is focused on enabling security teams to overcome asset visibility and exposure challenges. It enables organizations to see all assets (internal and external), primarily through API integrations with existing tools, query consolidated data, identify the scope of vulnerabilities and gaps in security controls. These tools then continuously monitor and analyze detected vulnerabilities to drill down the most critical threats to the business and prioritize necessary remediation and mitigation actions for improved cyber security.
Hardware asset management (HAM) tools are software applications and technology used by enterprise companies to manage all types of hardware assets, including IT, line of business and facilities management — regardless of location and industry. Key functionality includes the ability to: - Discover, identify, normalize, aggregate and store data for hardware assets. - Reconcile and manage the complete asset life cycle: procurement, arrival, storage, provisioning, use, transfer, service and disposition. - Govern access, visibility and control to specific assets based on the user’s role. - Optimize and integrate with other IT and financial systems for data, processes and workflow. - Flexibly assign asset ownership to a person, department or location. - Scale in record size and number of records as the organization grows. - Share standardized reports, create custom reporting and export data into other reporting systems. - Offer APIs for asset information to be ingested/entered through integration with procurement systems, software asset management (SAM) solutions or inventoried through CMDB or network discovery tools — as well as bar codes or RFID tags.
Software asset management (SAM) tools aim to decipher the complex and ever-changing world of software licensing. Core capability of SAM tools include discovery, normalization, reconciliation, optimization and reporting. SAM tools help address these common use cases: Discovery of software on on-premises, virtual and cloud platforms; Software entitlement management through a central repository, to track purchase data and contractual commitments; Spend management through demand forecasting, downgrading of entitlements, and reallocating of unused licenses or licenses assigned to leavers; Provision of software data insights by identifying licenses allocated to users and devices, software metering, providing usage data to procurement teams, and rightsizing. Ability to share data on software rationalization opportunities; Risk identification by detecting shadow usage, as well as end-of-life and end-of-support software; Increased collaboration between teams that participate in the software application life cycle, including all stakeholders internal and external to IT; Creation of reporting dashboards for operations teams and management.