Linking assets across sites

You can choose whether to link assets in different sites or treat them as unique entities. By linking matching assets in different sites, you can view and report on your assets in a way that aligns with your network configuration and reflects your asset counts across the organization. Below is some information to help you decide whether to enable this option.

Option 1

A corporation operates a chain of retail stores, each with the same network mapping, so it has created a site for each store. It does not link assets across sites, because each site reflects a unique group of assets.

Option 2

A corporation has a global network with a unique configuration in each location. It has created sites to focus on specific categories, and these categories may overlap. For example, a Linux server may be in one site called Finance and another called Ubuntu machines. The corporation links assets across sites so that in investigations and reporting, it is easier to recognize the Linux server as a single machine.

What exactly is an "asset"?

An asset is a set of proprietary, unique data gathered from a target device during a scan. This data, which distinguishes the scanned device when integrated into Nexpose, includes the following:

If the option to link assets across sites is disabled, Nexpose regards each asset as distinct from any other asset in any other site whether or not a given asset in another site is likely to be the same device.

For example, an asset named server1.example.com, with an IP address of 10.0.0.1 and a MAC address of 00:0a:95:9d:68:16 is part of one site called Boston and another site called PCI targets. Because this asset is in two different sites, it has two unique asset IDs, one for each site, and thus is regarded as two different entities.

Note:  Assets are considered matching if they have certain proprietary characteristics in common, such as host name, IP address, and MAC address.

If the option to link assets across sites is enabled, Nexpose determines whether assets in different sites match, and if they do, treats the assets that match each other as a single entity .

Do I want to link assets across sites?

The information below describes some considerations to take into account when deciding whether to enable this option.

Use Cases

You have two choices when adding assets to your site configurations:

Security considerations

Site-level controls

Transition considerations

If you choose to link assets across all sites on an installation that preceded the April 8, 2015 release, you will see some changes in your asset data and reports:

Enabling or disabling asset linking across sites

Note:  The cross-site asset linking feature is enabled by default for new installations as of the April 8, 2015, product update.

To enable assets in different sites to be recognized as a single asset:

  1. Review the above considerations.
  2. Log in to the application as a Global Administrator.
  3. Go to the Administration page.
  4. Under Global and Console Settings, next to Console, select Manage.
  5. Select Asset Linking.
  6. Select the check box for Link all matching assets in all sites.

Enabling linking assets across sites.

To disable linking so that matching assets in different sites are considered unique:

  1. Review the above considerations. Also note that removing the links will take some time.
  2. Log in to the application as a Global Administrator.
  3. Go to the Administration page.
  4. Under Global and Console Settings, next to Console, select Manage.
  5. Select Asset Linking.
  6. Clear the check box for Link all matching assets in all sites.
  7. Click Save under Global Settings.