Recently we introduced a powerful passive network scanning feature called Asset Radar. It continuously monitors your network traffic and offers a rapid, credential-free detection superpower to add to your Lansweeper toolbelt.
Asset Radar identifies assets as they connect to your network, enabling a whole set of exciting new use cases, which we will explain below. First, let’s take a look at the “Passive Network Scanning” concept.
Active vs Passive Network Scanning
The main idea behind Passive Scanning is to pick up the vast amount of data that networked IT assets expose and that can be captured without credentials. To establish a connection to a router, for instance, assets start broadcasting and receiving network packets. These messages contain a lot of valuable information, if you look under the hood.
Lansweeper’s Asset Radar continuously captures all of those network packets and analyses them to quickly capture information about the devices. The packets don’t need to be addressed to your Lansweeper Server, nor does Lansweeper use any mechanics that your network isn’t already using. Instead, it detects devices with minimal (or no) network impact. What’s more, Passive Scanning does not disturb sensitive devices or trigger alerts on security tools throughout the network
While a passive scan will never return the level of detail about your assets you would expect from an active scan, there are very good reasons to deploy both together.
The first reason is completeness and timeliness of the information. Active network scanning takes more time to set up, is slower to run and requires more resources than a passive scan. As a result, rogue devices or vulnerabilities can slip through between active scans. In contrast, a passive scan would pick them up. To really dig in and get all relevant information from the asset, you need to perform an active credential-based scan of the device.
Have Your Cake and Eat It Too
With Lansweeper, you don’t have to choose sides between active or passive scanning. You can set up Asset Radar in combination with a follow-up active deepscan, and have the best of both worlds. Using Asset Radar to quickly scope out your network and track everything connected to it, you get fast, real-time coverage without setting up any credentials. Asset Radar works in concert with our unique Credential-Free Device Recognition (CDR) technology to deliver unmatched inventory accuracy across the entire IT estate. CDR detects and recognizes every device on the network — even non-scannable devices — without the need for credentials or complex pre-configurations.
Then, you can use our agentless deepscan technology to dig deeper and collect extensive data about the assets, including hardware specs, installed software, user data, event logs, registry information and so on.
We believe this feature is a great addition to the Lansweeper functionality and see some interesting use cases:
⚡️ Detect Rogue Devices
As Asset Radar listens 24×7 to network traffic to discover devices, even transient devices (those that only connect for a few seconds) are recorded and scanned. Instant detection means you can pick up possible rogue devices connecting to your network. Read more about Rogue Network Device Detection.
⚡️ Credential-Free Device Recognition
Asset Radar works in combination with our advanced Credential-free Device Recognition Technology which recognizes and identifies every device on the network — even previously non-scannable devices — without the need for credentials or complex pre-configurations, giving you unprecedented insight and control across your entire IT estate.
⚡️ Tackle BYOD Challenges
The trend toward Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is resulting in unmanaged devices lacking integration with IT management platforms — and a host of new security challenges. We all know you can’t secure what you don’t know you have. Lansweeper’s Asset Radar continuously monitors all asset activity, automatically tracking all newly introduced devices in your network, whether they are managed or unmanaged, eliminating blind spots.
There are a multitude of other exciting things you can do with Asset Rader, such as quickly scoping out a new network or combining Asset Radar results with interesting reports and alerts. We would love to hear your thoughts, or even better, how you are leveraging this new capability to Know your IT!
If you got an interesting story to share on how you’re using Asset Radar, don’t hesitate to reach out to us using the form below.
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