Your Guide to Effective Asset Risk Management for ITAM Security
Loss of company assets and employee devices can be frustrating. But when missing or stolen devices appear on your company network, the situation can become scary. Effective IT Asset Management practices — including linking configuration items to their physical hardware counterparts — give teams the visibility needed to catch rogue devices before they cause harm. If a hacker wants to access an open enterprise like a hospital from a parking lot over WiFi, then what better device than an authenticated laptop? Multi-factor authentication is great at providing an added level of protection to your company’s operations and data.
It gives without overly impacting ease for end users. If you aren’t careful, however, then lost and stolen assets can cause harm to your environment.
Multi-factor Authentication for asset risk management
The company registers and authorizes company-owned assets and approved employee devices to access resources on the company network. This is the first level of security. If the device isn’t trusted, then someone can’t gain access. The user then signs in to the device either using a type of biometric scanner (more secure) or, more often, using traditional passwords and PIN codes (less secure). The user is only able to access company resources and data if he or she is using an authenticated device known and trusted on the company network. The strategy is that two levels of authentication provide security assurance – and they do most of the time. Understanding the distinction between [IT asset management tools vs CMDB](https://virima.com/blog/it-asset-management-tools-vs-cmdb) is essential here — both play a role in maintaining an accurate record of which devices are authorized, but they serve different functions in your security architecture.
Why You Are Vulnerable to Attack
The multi-factor authentication security protocol can be less secure in the case of a lost or stolen device.
If a would-be hacker is in close proximity to a building with Wi-Fi, then he or she can potentially gain open access to the company’s IT environment. There is still the challenge of obtaining the user’s password or PIN. But most hackers have determined how to overcome those barriers.
When your employees are not in possession and control of an authenticated device, you must take critical steps. Maintaining an IT risk register to formally document and track these exposure points helps ensure that lost or stolen device scenarios are accounted for in your broader risk mitigation strategy.
4 Steps to Asset Risk Management and Protect Your Company’s Resources
There are 4 actions every company should take to manage the risk of lost and stolen assets returning to your IT environment and becoming a security vulnerability.
1. Ensure operating systems are updated and security features enabled along with conducting frequent inventories of device configurations.
2. Turning on remote security and administrative functions can enable company administrators to access lost/stolen devices. Additionally, the company can lock and, if necessary, delete sensitive information before it can be used to cause harm.
3. Establish a policy and process for reporting lost and stolen devices to the company administrator. Enabling this will block their access to company resources. Additionally, you must have a process to unblock the device if recovered.
4. Monitor for blocked devices trying to access network resources. You may have blocked a single device, but hackers tend not to quit easily and will likely try again in hopes of being lucky. As the intruder has to be located in physical proximity to a building with WiFi, building/parking lot security cameras can possibly help ID the intruder, so law enforcement is able to apprehend them.
Keeping those configuration inventories accurate depends on more than manual audits — understanding [ITAM CMDB integration](https://virima.com/blog/ci-hardware-asset-auto-linking-itam-accuracy-faq) and how CI-to-hardware asset auto-linking works can significantly improve the reliability of your asset records when a device goes missing or reappears unexpectedly.
Also read: Virima IT Asset Discovery features
Effective monitoring requires the right tool-set to help your network administrators and security staff identify potential risks and act quickly. If you are evaluating your current tooling, it is worth reviewing what Spiceworks IT asset management offers alongside its limitations, so you can make an informed decision about whether it meets your security and asset visibility requirements.
IT Discovery and visualization capabilities like those found in Virima can help make this process easy and dependable. For teams that also need to formalize how security risks feed into planning cycles, a risk register for IT project workflows provides a structured way to connect asset-related threats to change management and project decisions. Lost and stolen assets certainly frustrate end-users, but when those assets return in the hands of a hacker, the situation has just become scary.
The ability to monitor configurations across common operating systems, correlate data with loss prevention databases, and integrate with network configuration tools gives your staff a complete, unified monitoring picture. To learn more about how Virima can help your company manage IT risk, download our IT Asset Security Circle white paper.
Virima is here to help. To get started, contact us today to schedule a demo and explore the possibilities!
