What Is an Asset Inventory?

An asset inventory is the full documented list that details all of a company’s technology resources and the details surrounding those assets. An asset inventory is recommended to help organize and manage all technology assets to ensure full visibility by stakeholders and leadership. It also serves as a reference point for mitigating any cyber incidents that your organization may face. A primary goal of asset inventories is to eliminate shadow IT, which is commonly identified as a pain point for many companies.

Shadow IT can create huge issues. Capterra found that 76% of SMBs felt shadow IT posed a moderate to significant threat to their business while 89% have experienced a negative financial impact as a result of unidentified assets. Keeping an asset inventory helps to mitigate those issues by increasing transparency and making sure there are no outlying devices or software being used without the express knowledge of your organization. In fact, keeping an accurate asset inventory is highly recommended by cybersecurity experts as part of a comprehensive security strategy. This is what you need to know.

Asset Inventory Definition and Purpose

Asset inventories include every technology tool that you have connected to, installed on your systems or is being accessed by your environment. This involves all of the hardware and endpoints that are assigned to users, as well as all software applications that you own or that are accessed on the cloud. You want to consider all laptops, servers, mobile phones, printers and other connected devices. For software, you want to document all owned applications, integrated platforms or cloud-based tools.

An asset inventory is essential for helping to cut costs and eliminate overlapping of tools and equipment, but it’s also an essential element of a solid cybersecurity plan. After all, you can’t mitigate or even identify risk if you don’t have a clear picture of what your entire technology environment looks like. The asset inventory creates full visibility into all of your technology and raises awareness of potential threats and operational disruption.

What Should You Include in an Asset Inventory?

Asset inventories should be detailed and contain all of the information you need to mitigate a risk should it arise. The more information you have, the better positioned you are to respond quickly and resolve any incidents. Include as many details as possible.

Your asset inventory should include the following:

Hardware

• Type: The category the asset falls into, such as laptop, server or router
• Manufacturer information: The brand, model and serial number of the device
• Specifications: Any details that illustrate capacity, processing speeds or other descriptive details
• Users: The people who have access and utilize the equipment
• Configuration settings: Any access limitations, setup concerns or possible settings that might inhibit future projects

Software and Cloud-Based Tools

• Service: Name and type of service, such as Microsoft Word
• Owner: Which department or people are using the application and which have privileged access and limited permissions
• Version: Which version you’re using
• Licensing: The number and type of licenses you have along with users and license keys
• Installation details: The date you installed the software and who performed the installation
• Expiration: The date your licenses expire

For All Assets

• Rank the risk level to the business of each asset
• List whether or not the hardware or software is being used to process sensitive data or PII (personally identifiable information)
• Document any key experts for each asset should it fail or require immediate assistance
• Catalog what operations rely on each of those assets

Benefits of an Asset Inventory

An asset inventory can be advantageous for your organization. It can help inform your financial, technical, security and overall business strategies. It can also provide the following benefits:

• Helps your organization maintain compliance
• Allows you to calculate cost and risk associated with all your assets
• Gives visibility into the asset lifecycle and maintenance records
• Provides critical information for implementation planning and migration projects
• Improves data quality and consistency
• Helps to eliminate shadow IT and overlapping functionality
• Allows for quick identification of equipment during incident response
• Creates standardization across departments for asset management
• Account for and help to lessen and gain transparency into lost assets

Asset Inventory Best Practices

Asset inventories can be managed with software or a simple spreadsheet. Software tools often have built-in tools that allow you to track and monitor assets and manage their maintenance schedules. While they’re often considered to be helpful, it’s still possible to maintain an inventory without additional cost.

Regardless of how you choose to manage it, make sure you adhere to these best practices:

• Keep a live, centralized version of your asset inventory that updates in real time across all documents and teams
• Bring shadow IT under the purview of a managing department, including any personal devices leveraging your network
• Keep a record of obsolete and retired assets
• Monitor depreciation and maintenance needs
• Maintain and upgrade security efforts where possible
• Keep an updated record of user access
• Don’t forget to include any regional offices, partners or vendors when documenting user access
• Develop a process for gathering asset information outside of technology departments

Just make sure your asset inventory remains updated and visible regardless of how you choose to maintain it.

Improve your cybersecurity resilience.