Asset Groups

Asset groups are logical grouping of network IP's. You can group the discovered IP's based on domains and other network entities like switches and routers. You can create a group, say Windows Group for all your Windows machines in your network , Linux Group for all your Linux machines in your network, and even groups for all your Cisco routers or HP switches present in your network. Asset grouping thus provides you with the option to perform selective scanning of desired hosts.

By organizing assets into logical subsections of your network, you can limit the scope of the scan target, making the results and remediation tasks more manageable. Asset groups provide flexibility, allowing for cases where the same assets may be defined in multiple groups having different business priorities.

View Asset Groups

To view the list of existing asset groups,

Visit the 'Assets' tab.
Click on the Asset Groups sub-tab
This view will display the list of Asset Groups created (if any).
From here you can perform operations such as, scanning the entire group by clicking on 'Scan Groups' button and deleting the group by click on 'Delete Groups' button.

Providing credentials for Asset group

You can set the credentials for an asset group (login username and password), which will be applied commonly across all assets in this group. This can be done by clicking on the icon against each group name. Each asset might have been assigned a different set of credentials from the Assets tab, but when it is a part of an Asset group, the credentials applied for the group only will hold good for all vulnerability management operations.

Create a new asset group by grouping existing assets

To create a new asset group follow these instructions :

Click on the New Group tab after you login to the web interface.
This will drop to 3 options - choose the first one: 'Group existing Assets'
This displays the new group creation page.
In the 'Group Name' field enter a descriptive name.
In the 'Description' field enter a brief description about the asset group.
Select from the list of host names / IP addresses and click 'Create'.
Your Group will be created and the assets will be added to the group and will appear in the Asset Groups list.

Alternatively, you can visit the 'Assets' tab, select the Asset Groups sub-tab and click on the 'New Group' button to get to the same screen as above.

Create asset groups from Domain

You can create asset groups by picking up hosts from the different domains available in your enterprise network.

Click on the New Group tab after you login to the web interface.
This will drop to 3 options - choose the third option: 'Import from Domain'
This will lead to a screen where the list of domains is automatically displayed.
Choose the domains from the list and click 'Create Groups'
Each domain selected will be added as an individual asset group with group name same as domain name
All systems under the domain will be automatically part of the respective asset group

Note : This feature is available only when the Security Manager Plus server is running in a Windows system.

Create asset groups by importing from CSV file

You can create asset groups by specifying host names or IP addresses of systems in a CSV file, and then importing this file from Security Manager Plus

Click on the New Group tab after you login to the web interface.
This will drop to 3 options - choose the second option: 'Import from CSV'
Click on the 'Import from File' link present on the right hand side of the screen.
This will lead to a screen from where you can browse and select the file with the systems list
The name of the asset group, description of the group and system names or IP addresses can be provided in the file. More than one group can also be created by separating each group information with hash (#)
Once the file has been selected, click on the Create button. Groups will be created as per the information in the file.

You can also supply the hostnames/IP address in the 'Device Names' text area provided on this screen, manually and they will be added to the asset group.