ITAM & NETSEC THE RELATIONSHIP
There are many ways to position and apply a little spin to suit one or another’s vision, but there are some fundamental aspects to the relationship between ITAM and NETSEC that cannot be argued with.
ITAM, if done correctly will have the single truth of what IT assets are being used within an organisation, hardware (and not only computers, but other network attached assets) and software. A comprehensive ITAM solution will be able to provide a level of detail about those assets that will be invaluable in keeping your environment safe.
When an issue is identified through NETSEC, the ITAM tools should be in an ideal position to be able to action the remedial activities needed, such as patching or removing software or identifying devices that should not be on the network.
If we were to take software in isolation, an effective ITAM tool will hold a complete inventory of all software installed on all devices. If you have normalised your software estate, as discussed in another related paper (found here), this task will become much easier. If your ITAM tools have advanced software recognition capabilities, you would also be able to learn about the current patch levels of software and clearly identify where updates are available, allowing your NETSEC teams to prioritise the applications that need patching.
Add system configuration details to this can enable you to not only identify what you have, but also what they are doing, such as services that may be running (Web Servers, FTP Servers etc.), users access rights to network and file shares and local device settings such as BitLocker, firewall settings and AV status details etc.