Reinventing Software Asset Inventory

As digital systems expand in scope, mission-criticality, and reach, organizations find themselves challenged to understand and account for them. The digital estate presents an information management problem that has increased dramatically in scale and complexity since the early days of computing. Digital systems support financial, supply chain, and even healthcare outcomes, among many other uses. Understanding the resources and their configurations and interplay is essential to sustaining their smooth and secure operation.

Yet, too many organizations struggle with manual, ad hoc procedures that yield inconsistent and sometimes inaccurate information that cannot achieve the necessary precision to support operational objectives. Imprecise, inconsistent, and inaccurate inventory data (sometimes called “metadata” in the context of digital systems, as this is “data about the data processing infrastructure”) will stunt the efficacy of advancements such as automated governance and impede an organization’s ability to respond to threats such as Log4j. Inventory must be driven by objective evidence, captured through repeatable procedures, and maintained in real-time.

Drawing from the principles of automated governance, we propose a methodology and approach to maintaining software asset inventory that allows for granular and reproducible metadata captured and updated in real-time throughout the software life cycle.