Educational Institutions and Their Debatable Asset Management
Universities are the focal point of today’s academic world, and with so many out there, each seeks recognition amongst its counterparts. Naturally, this means becoming the most attractive institution to prospective students. Traditionally, sport was the way to do it. A spot-on example of this is in the cult classic TV show “Blue Mountain State”, whereby the entire success of the university rides on the back of its football team and its ability to win. Universities were (and still are) known to invest heavily into their athletic departments to develop the most competitive sports teams.
However, times have changed; universities have shifted towards becoming increasingly entrepreneurial, rapidly escalating the adoption of new technologies to advance their R&D capabilities as the commercialization of these departments has been bringing them great financial success and interest. Yet, such growth (and the number of students it attracts) leads to the accumulation of technological assets – and, with that, comes a plethora of asset management challenges. The underlying issue is a lack of visibility, and universities must take care of their blind spots in order to have an effective asset management process.
How to get your Degree in MAM (Masters in Asset Management)
The first thing that you need to do is enroll in your primary class – visibility. Developing a proper conceptualization of this topic will help tackle asset risk management challenges.
As previously stated, visibility is a core principle in achieving proper asset management; this means complete asset visibility, down to the Physical Layer (Layer 1). Nowadays, this is a must for universities as the influx of technological devices from different sources is constant and ever-growing due to the pursuit of improving the institution’s capabilities and offerings for students. Universities need to verify the integrity of every acquired device, ensuring that it is what it claims to be so that they have an accurate understanding of their asset infrastructure. Further, as the student body grows, bringing with them their BYODs, universities are plagued by an increasing number of unmanaged assets. It can’t be expected of students to install multiple security agents on their personal devices for the purpose of asset management. As a result, the university’s security team is left blind to the various components that make up all the BYODs in the environment. Universities must achieve complete visibility of all hardware assets, focusing on agentless solutions to do so.
Once adequate hardware visibility has been established, the university can better manage its assets as there is a deeper, more accurate understanding of the environment. This is vital for facing the challenge of unmanaged assets, as these devices come and go on a daily basis. With complete asset visibility, the appropriate access control policies get enforced, ensuring the proper usage of devices within the university’s environment.
Graduate with the Proper Asset Management Education & Secure Your IoT Devices
Sepio’s solution provides the necessary visibility to minimize the asset management challenges facing higher education institutions. Sepio detects devices based on their existence, not their activity. Using Physical Layer data signals and a unique machine learning algorithm, Sepio creates a digital fingerprint of all hardware assets, revealing their true identity. Each device gets assigned a contextual risk score based on the university’s rules, ensuring effective asset management. With an agentless deployment option, Sepio-1’s capabilities extend to unmanaged assets, ensuring all devices get accounted for and managed.
