{"id":63596,"date":"2023-02-05T09:50:04","date_gmt":"2023-02-05T01:50:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/version-2.com.sg\/?p=63596"},"modified":"2024-09-13T16:31:46","modified_gmt":"2024-09-13T08:31:46","slug":"how-to-track-asset-ownership-with-runzero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/version-2.com\/en\/2023\/02\/how-to-track-asset-ownership-with-runzero\/","title":{"rendered":"How to track asset ownership with runZero"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Imagine: there\u2019s a new security threat. How do you find out if your organization is affected? You might research the CVE to gauge the severity and impact of the vulnerability. You might perform a vuln scan \u2014 if there\u2019s a vuln check available. At some point, you\u2019ll eventually end up with a list of devices that you need to update.<\/p>\n

What are your next steps?<\/p>\n

The cost of not tracking asset ownership <\/i><\/a><\/h2>\n

In an ideal world, your asset inventory would be the first place you would look for information. However, the reality is: most organizations have their asset inventory data distributed across multiple solutions and maintained by different teams. So instead of being able to focus on mitigating issues, your security team spends an inordinate amount of time doing detective work. And for security practitioners, time is of the essence.<\/p>\n

Asset inventory is the first step to getting context around a device: the hardware, OS, software, etc. But what about who owns it? More and more, knowing who is responsible for an asset is as important as knowing what an asset is. Without clear asset ownership tracking, you waste a lot of time going from team to team, person to person, trying to find out who is responsible for an asset.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a look at three reasons why a lack of asset ownership can adversely impact your business.<\/p>\n

Reason #1: Forgotten assets can be costly <\/i><\/a><\/h3>\n

One of the biggest obstacles to tracking asset ownership is humans. Humans are dynamic, often upgrading to new equipment, changing roles, or even leaving organizations entirely. As a result, assets are often left abandoned, unmanaged, and unowned. Documenting asset ownership manually, like in a spreadsheet, means that the data becomes outdated very quickly. Effective asset ownership tracking requires regular updates and attention. Without a major investment of time and resources to maintain asset ownership tracking, stale data will continue to plague your organization. For example, consider infrastructure that no longer has an owner, but is still racking up recurring expenses. These forgotten assets can be costly over time.<\/p>\n

Reason #2: Lack of asset ownership can lead to service outages <\/i><\/a><\/h3>\n

Your business relies on having systems that are working efficiently. Systems need to be updated, upgraded, and maintained regularly to ensure that everything runs smoothly and outages do not occur. However, what would happen if a specific system needed a configuration update to continue to operate? How would you know who to go to?<\/p>\n

Oftentimes, it\u2019s a goose chase. You start with one person (or team) and hope they can point you in the right direction. While you\u2019re chasing down the appropriate person to help you, access to the systems you need may be shuttered or months may have passed by. These consequences can be detrimental to business \u2013 especially if these systems directly impact revenue.<\/p>\n

Reason #3: Wasted time slows down remediation <\/i><\/a><\/h3>\n

9 years ago: Shellshock<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

5 years ago: Apache Struts<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

1 year ago: Log4Shell<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Nearly a decade has come and gone between these major vulnerabilities, and yet, building comprehensive asset inventory and tracking asset ownership continues to be a challenge. One of the biggest challenges faced by security teams is that they often need to rely on asset owners to take action to update and secure their devices. However, tracking down the right asset owner can be a bit of a journey through a myriad of data sources \u2013 from CMDBs to VMs to EDRs to device logs to spreadsheets. The amount of time that security teams spend hunting for information is a hindrance to fast response and remediation times.<\/p>\n

Tracking asset ownership with runZero <\/i><\/a><\/h2>\n

runZero 3.5<\/a> introduces the ability to track asset owners in your inventory. Asset owners can be anyone in your organization who can help you remediate issues. For most organizations, assets will likely have multiple owners, such as an individual, team, and business unit. For example, a laptop might have an assigned device user, business owner, IT owner, and security owner. Each of these assignments will help you zero in on the right person who can take action on the device, based on the situation. Let\u2019s take a look at how runZero can help you track different types of owners within your organization.<\/p>\n

What are ownership types? <\/i><\/a><\/h3>\n

In runZero, ownership types<\/a> help you classify and assign ownership to assets. There is a default ownership type, called Asset Owner<\/code>, which automatically pulls owner data from integrations you have configured. Otherwise, you can add up to nine custom ownership types based on what your organization needs. For example, you might want to have ownership types for the security owner, IT owner, and business owner.<\/p>\n

When you create an ownership type<\/a>, you will need to specify the following:<\/p>\n