Understanding Inventory
- Laura McWilliams
Isora GRC uses three different kinds of inventory objects in its database- assets (formerly known as hosts), applications (formerly known as apps), and third-party vendor products. These inventory objects may be used when performing different types of assessments. It’s possible to use Isora GRC to perform organizational assessments without having any inventory data at all. However, most institutions do use Isora GRC to track inventory related to assessments.
Types of Inventory and How They Are Used
Inventory Type | Description | Usage | Linkages / Relationships1 |
|---|---|---|---|
Asset | Any network asset (servers, laptops, routers, phones, tablets, etc) | Asset Enrichment part of Organizational Assessment | Resides on a sheet that belongs to a single unit. May have individual people assigned as asset contacts. May have one or more applications deployed2 on it. |
Application | Application or system- often refers to locally-developed applications | Application Enrichment part Application Assessment | Has a single owning unit. Can link to a related third-party vendor product. May be deployed2 onto an associated asset. |
Third-party vendor product | Third-party vendor products (operating systems, applications, hosted solutions, SaaS offerings, etc) | Vendor Assessment | May have deployments2 associated with it. |
1 Isora GRC is a relational database-drive application. Understanding the types of objects in its database and how they relate to each other can help you to use the product more effectively.
2 There are two different types of “deployments” recognized by Isora GRC. Third-party vendor product deployments are an actual database object representing a specific use-case by a specific unit for a third-party vendor product. Application deployment simply refers to an app being installed on a specific asset (usually the asset is a server or host).
What if I have other types of inventory?
You may want to track objects that don’t necessarily neatly fit into these categories. Both the asset and application inventory types are flexible enough that you could use them to represent any kind of object you want to keep track of.
See also: FAQ: Which assessment methodology should I use?