Operations · Asset Management
IT Asset Management
Knowing what hardware, software, licences and cloud resources you have, who owns them, what state they are in, and when they leave.
Overview
ITAM tracks assets financially and operationally across their lifecycle: request, procure, receive, assign, maintain, reassign, and dispose with certified data destruction. It answers ownership, cost, warranty and compliance questions.
Asset accuracy is a security prerequisite. Vulnerability management, patch compliance, licence compliance and incident scoping are all bounded by how well the inventory reflects reality.
How it works
- 01Discovery from endpoint management, directory, network scanning, cloud APIs and SaaS admin APIs feeds the inventory automatically.
- 02Reconciliation compares discovered data with purchased and contractual records to surface gaps in both directions.
- 03Assignment links an asset to a person, cost centre and location, enabling recovery at leaver time.
- 04Disposal records certified destruction or return, closing the compliance loop.
Sequence
- 1Request
- 2Procure
- 3Receive & record
- 4Assign
- 5Maintain
- 6Reassign
- 7Retire & dispose
Reference table
| Aspect | ITAM | CMDB |
|---|---|---|
| Primary question | What do we own and what does it cost? | How do our services depend on each other? |
| Record type | Assets with financial and contractual attributes | Configuration items with relationships |
| Lifecycle focus | Procurement to disposal | Current operational state |
| Typical users | Finance, procurement, IT management | Operations, change, incident, architecture |
| Key measure | Inventory and licence accuracy | Relationship accuracy and usefulness |
Security considerations
- Reconcile discovered devices against the inventory and investigate unknowns, that difference is your unmanaged attack surface.
- Include SaaS subscriptions and cloud resources; both accumulate silently and expensively.
- Certify data destruction on disposal and retain the certificates.
Common misconfigurations
- Spreadsheet inventories maintained manually and immediately stale.
- Leaver process that reclaims accounts but not devices or SaaS licences.
- Cloud resources untagged, making ownership and cost unattributable.
IT vs OT
OT asset management must capture controllers, firmware versions and process function, often through passive discovery because active scanning can disrupt operations. See OT Atlas.
IT Atlas covers Information Technology. Operational Technology is covered separately at otatlas.ai.