Ensure Your CMDB Reflects The True State of IoT

The threat landscape today is much different than just a few years ago, specifically with vulnerable IoT/OT/ICS devices and applications being exploited more frequently. From the Board of Directors on down, organizations are being advised to make sure IoT is visible, operational, and secure – and to make sure they stay that way. Key to making that happen is to ensure you have all IoT assets accounted for in your CMDB (Configuration Management Database).

Not familiar with CMDB? CMDBs are databases that track the state of assets (IT, IoT, OT, ICS, and all the related applications and systems) and also provide information on the relationship between them. As assets or their configurations change, the CMDB must be updated to reflect the current status. Often the CMDB will federate data from multiple sources so that an organization can have a single comprehensive view of their operations, allowing the organization to then analyze and plan more efficiently and accurately. Leading CMDB vendors include ServiceNow, Device42, IBM Tivoli, and many others – all of whom Viakoo can exchange data with and help increase the usefulness of.

While CMDBs have been used for several years for IT assets and systems, only in the last couple of years that there has been a focus on incorporating IoT assets (reflecting how the IoT attack surface has grown). The good news is there are multiple routes for incorporating IoT data into your CMDB and enhancing the visibility into your operations:

Integration with Discovery Solutions: Viakoo partners with leading asset discovery solutions such as Armis, Forescout, Claroty, and others, providing bi-directional synchronization of data. These systems already have connections into CMDBs, so that the data provided from Viakoo can be added to the CMDB through those systems. For example, a leading healthcare provider uses Armis and Viakoo for asset discovery, threat assessment, and vulnerability remediation, and transfers the combined data from these solutions automatically into ServiceNow.
Direct integration with CMDB: Viakoo data (including ticketing information) can be directly imported into the CMDB, and then within the CMDB integrates that data with federated data from asset discovery solutions. This is a good approach for environments where there may be more than one asset discovery solution being used.
Tightly Coupled IoT systems: One of the key advantages on the Viakoo Action Platform is in how it understands the relationships between multiple asset types and applications used in an IoT workflow, what is referred to as a tightly coupled IoT application. Since a CMDB is designed to understand those relationships (and allow the organization to analyze and plan based on it), using an IoT management platform like Viakoo that can pass those relationships into the CMDB makes the overall process more efficient and streamlined – and a core reason why Viakoo enables multiple ways for that data to pass directly into systems like ServiceNow.

An IoT management platform like Viakoo provides many benefits directly, such as vulnerability remediation, zero trust architecture via certificates, and comprehensive password management. But the force-multiplier for your security team is when it is combined with other parts of your technology stack like asset discovery, threat assessment, or CMDBs. Want to learn more about our partnerships and integrations – click here to sign up for time with a Viakoo expert and learn how we can help enhance your existing solutions.