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NIST Special Publication (SP) 1800-5, "IT Asset Management" published

Nov 15, 2018

Belarc is very pleased to have participated in NIST's example solution for IT Asset Management (ITAM), demonstrating how ITAM is a critical component of any effective cybersecurity process.

From NIST: "Financial institutions deploy a wide array of information technology devices, systems, and applications across a wide geographic area. While these physical assets can be labeled and tracked using bar codes and databases, understanding and controlling the cybersecurity resilience of those systems and applications is a much larger challenge. Not being able to track the location and configuration of networked devices and software can leave an organization vulnerable to security threats. Additionally, many financial organizations include subsidiaries, branches, third-party partners, and contractors as well as temporary workers and guests; tracking and managing hardware and software across these groups adds another layer of complexity.

To address this cybersecurity challenge, security engineers from the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) developed an example solution that allows an organization to centrally monitor and gain deeper insight into their entire IT asset portfolio with an automated platform. Using open source and commercially available technologies, this example solution addresses questions such as "What operating systems are our laptops running?" and "Which devices are vulnerable to the latest threat?"

The example solution, provided in NIST Special Publication (SP) 1800-5, “IT Asset Management,” gives companies the ability to track, manage, and report on information assets throughout their entire life cycle. This can ultimately increase cybersecurity resilience by enhancing the visibility of assets, identifying vulnerable assets, enabling faster response to security alerts, revealing which applications are actually being used, and reducing help desk response times.

For details: https://www.nccoe.nist.gov/projects/use-cases/financial-services-sector/it-asset-management

About Belarc

Belarc's products are used for software license management, cybersecurity status, IT asset management, and configuration monitoring. Belarc's products are used by more than 50 million computers and are licensed by numerous customers worldwide including: AIG Asia, Bureau of Land Management, Catholic Relief Services, Federal Aviation Administration, Oakland County (Michigan), NASA, Railinc, Travelers, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Navy.