Automated managing of enterprise assets

Qualys announced the availability of hierarchical Dynamic Asset Tagging for its QualysGuard Cloud Platform and suite of applications for security and compliance.

The patent-pending technology enables customers to easily manage assets in any size environment with the scalability and flexibility to support millions of assets in large, highly dynamic enterprise environments.

QualysGuard Dynamic Asset Tagging automates the process of inventory management, and is seamlessly integrated with many workflows throughout the QualysGuard application. Easy-to-use, rule-based dynamic tags enable automatic hierarchical organization of IT systems, web applications, questionnaires, scanner appliances, and a wide range of other data within the QualysGuard application.

Just a few of the key benefits of the dynamic tagging features are:

• Leverage scan results to organize assets. The rule-based Dynamic Asset Tagging engine uses information from scan results to assign or remove tags, allowing scans to automatically and regularly keep your assets organized, eliminating manual labor.
• Fast, scalable tag assignment. QualysGuard Dynamic Asset Tagging provides near-real time tag assignment even when processing hundreds of scans on millions of assets.
• Flexible organization of assets. Users can manually assign tags by dragging and dropping, or create dynamic tags based on rules. Dynamic tagging rules can be as simple as an OS pattern match, to as powerful as a customer-customizable script that evaluates complex business logic.
• Hierarchical organization. Assets can be grouped for different needs such as geography, line of business, or technology type, and into trees showing relationships between assets and various business units. Assets can have multiple tags assigned, all in multiple hierarchies, creating a very flexible, robust, and accurate organization.
• Powerful access management. Tags are used to apply role-based security to assets so customers can assign access privileges to users based on one more tags – creating a powerful way to secure the use of QualysGuard in large enterprises.
• Focused reporting and scanning. Users can choose to runs scans and reports against one or more tags, creating an easy way to quickly zero in on specific areas and assets in your business.

“Keeping an accurate and up-to-date inventory of enterprise assets is a challenge that most organizations are facing; however accomplishing it is a key step in maintaining a secure environment,” said Charles Kolodgy, research vice president for security products at IDC. “The new asset tagging service from Qualys combined with high-accuracy scans allows organizations to know their assets no matter where they are and keep them up-to-date with the latest information including, OS, location, function and other important characteristics.”