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Full visibility into all assets under an organization’s control to understand attack surface
area and any existing security control gaps.
Quicker audit compliance reporting through more accurate, current and comprehensive
asset and security control reports.
Consolidation of various existing products already collecting asset information into a
single normalized view, reducing the need for manual processes or dependencies on
homegrown applications.
Access to consolidated asset views for multiple teams across the organization such as
enterprise architects, vulnerability management teams and IT administrators, who can
benefit from viewing and querying consolidated asset inventories.
Lower resistance to collect data and gain security visibility from shadow IT organizations,
installed third-party systems and line-of-business applications where IT lacks governance
and control. Security teams need visibility in these places while IT may not.
Obstacles
Resistance to “yet another” tool — Organizations with adjacent products that provide
asset visibility may be challenged to justify the cost and addition of CAASM.
Products may be licensed per asset consumed and become cost-prohibitive for very
large organizations with millions of assets under management.
Scalability of a single instance may be limited for extremely large environments, both for
data collection as well as usability of the tool with excessive data points.
Tools that can be integrated with a CAASM either do not exist (e.g., lacking API) or are
blocked for integration by teams who own the existing tools.
Reconciliation processes that conflict with source systems can cause confusion and
frustration if the source system of record is not allowed to be corrected when errors are
found.
User Recommendations
Take advantage of POCs or free versions of products to try before you buy. Products are
nondisruptive and easy to deploy, limiting the risk of purchasing a CAASM product and
then needing to retire or replace it with another vendor.
Determine the primary use cases you want to solve with CAASM such as achieving more
comprehensive visibility into assets, auto remediation of security gaps, updating sources
of records or easing compliance reporting burdens.
Inventory all available APIs that can be integrated with the CAASM product and make
sure you have user accounts available to integrate.
Extend usage beyond core security teams to multiple users including compliance teams,
threat hunters, vulnerability management teams and system administrators.
Inquire with incumbent security vendors to understand what visibility they currently
provide into assets and if they have a roadmap to provide CAASM functionality in the
future.
Sample Vendors
AirTrack Software; Axonius; Brinqa; JupiterOne; Panaseer; Sevco Security
Pen Testing as a Service
Analysis By: Prateek Bhajanka