Internal or External Facing Asset System 

For many companies the need to collect and record Asset information and keep it internally facing is a reasonable requirement. After all, with the introduction of GDPR, the last thing any organisation wants is a data leak. But is there an argument to making the systems that gather the asset data, totally internally facing? Or with the change to homeworking, brought about by Covid-19, is there a decent argument to allow those systems to now be externally facing, as no one is in the office?

Asset management is all about knowing

• What you own
• Where it is
• Who is using it
• What value it brings to your organisation

The installation of an agent onto devices with the correct operating systems will enable the gathering of data to be more efficient, certainly with regards to the who, what’s and where’s. But having a system that loses track of your connected devices once they disconnect from your network, can be a risk, especially if that device is gone for a while and misses updates or becomes unmanaged.

By making your Asset Management system externally facing and having your agents check in over the internet, this removes the issue of no longer being able to physically see the device. It also overcomes the issue of only being able to manage machines when they are connected to your VPN, as the connection is less likely to drop out in the middle of software deployment or updates.

By changing your system to being externally facing you will need to take reasonable steps to ensure the system is still secure, close down unneeded ports on the infrastructure and put in place other antivirus or security protection to protect from attacks. But is your systems communicate over HTTPS, then you will know that your data is secure even though the path to your door is very much in public.

Knowing that your devices connect is still only part of the picture though, and managing your other data such as ownership, location and status is still a vital part of controlling those assets that matter to your organisation.

AssetBlox will help you in terms of providing simple, secure connectivity from your internet connected endpoints to the cloud based management database. Our remote functionality also allows you to monitor if your systems are being updated by the owner, you can force the updates from your AssetBlox console or reboot to complete update cycles. With AssetBlox you not only know that your systems are owned connected and managed, but also secure and your data is safe.

AssetBlox is a product of Indigo Mountain, a UK based software and services provider.