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Is the lack of IoT device visibility costing you?

By Trent Fierro, Blog Contributor

It's a simple question where the answer should be yes or no, but in many instances, the response is, "I don't know."  The problem stems from IT teams having to contend with the devices that they issue and manage, devices that belong to their users, and now the introduction of wired and wireless enabled IoT devices that just show up on the network.

Without a clear picture of what is being connected and how they are being used, determining risk and associated cost is impossible. It's no longer prudent to assume that users will inform you about devices they've connected, or if the data you do have is current and accurate. Device intelligence with continuous monitoring and that's easy to implement and manage is the answer.

Does it take a special tool?

The idea of roasting a turkey with a lighter is interesting, but probably not very effective. Neither is identifying devices by using infrastructure management tools and old databases. They're not built to continuously monitor what's connected or provide an easy way to view devices by category, family and device type. IoT device visibility shouldn't be hard to get.

And, who has the time to hunt for and compile the data? It costs your IT team to put together a half-baked report (similar to what you end up with when trying to cook that turkey with a lighter) and you run the risk of not finding that IoT device that gets used to hack into your environment. That can lead to data loss and embarrassment - both of which are costly.

Aruba has the answer

IT has been asking for a comprehensive profiling solution that continuously finds devices, automatically provides current information by device and displays the data in a usable fashion.  To offer customers a choice, we've taken the profiling engine that currently resides in our ClearPass Policy Manager and we've introduced the ClearPass Universal Profiler on November 30, 2016.

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ClearPass Universal Profiler is a standalone solution that works in any multivendor environment and is geared towards customers that are not ready for NAC – no policy, integrated guest and BYOD onboarding, and dealing with 802.1X or non-AAA enforcement throughout their environment. It is intended to provide you with real-time device visibility, without the use of agents. Any device type can be found.

The advantage of using the Universal Profiler is that you can quickly deploy it and leverage collected context for performance tuning and audit requirements. Device totals that exceed expectations can help identify why users may have been having issues with IP voice calls or something similar. Identifying rogue APs, and IoT devices with known vulnerabilities is also useful across any vertical.

And there's visibility too

I can't finish without mentioning the dashboard. There's a new look with trending and filtering capabilities. Again, the idea is that you can easily see what is connecting and when needed, it's easy to find a specific device for troubleshooting or reporting requirements.

To learn more about the ClearPass Universal Profiler, check out the new web page, data sheet and Aruba At-A-Glance on "Endpoint visibility for Wired and Wireless."