Pop quiz. Right now, without looking. How many systems are on your network? How many systems are supposed to be there? Numbers not adding up? This is an ever present problem with enterprises today. So, what are you doing about it?

Years ago I was working for an enterprise and I had to deploy a new antivirus product. This was a rip and replace of the incumbent which had not been properly implemented and was horribly out of date and when the maintenance contract came up for renewal it was an easy chance to repair the issues.

The real challenge was identifying all of the systems that needed to be upgraded. My first port of call was to check the asset inventory system. I had reviewed the number of agents that were deployed in the incumbent software and after looking at the inventory I realized that there was a gap. Luckily there was only about 25 systems that had fallen between the cracks and thankfully these systems were up to date. They just weren’t reporting in for whatever reason.

SOURCE: forbes.com