Discovery of electronic assets using fingerprints

• US 10,380,538 B2
• Filed: 09/27/2005
• Issued: 08/13/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 09/27/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: BDNA Corporation (Flexera Software LLC)
• Original Assignee: BDNA Corporation (Flexera Software LLC)
• Inventors: Black, Alistair D'Lougar, Thorpe, John Robert
• Primary Examiner(s): Fan, Hua
• Application Number:
  US11/236,139
• Publication Number:
  US 20070198609A1
• Time in Patent Office: 5,068 Days
• Field of Search: 709224
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1464 for networked environments
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders

Abstract

A system to conduct automatic asset discovery inventory of a company'"'"'s computing assets from backup images stored on a backup system. In more complex embodiments, user interface tools are provided to provide a choice of sources of data from which to conduct said inventory discovery. The user can choose between backup images, the actual computing systems and other nodes on one more networks of a company or third party software. If third party software is chosen, data gathered by the software about the network topology and attributes of systems on the network is gathered and converted to an intermediate data format. This intermediate data format is then converted to a data format understood by said automatic asset discovery system and then fingerprints stored in said automatic asset discovery system are compared to said data and conclusions drawn about the attributes of the network and systems on it. These conclusions are then stored in a repository along with conclusions drawn from comparison of fingerprints to said backup images and/or said computing systems themselves.

Claims

1. A method for automatically discovering assets on a computing device associated with a computing network, the method comprising:

receiving user selection of one or more sources of asset fingerprints, wherein each source includes a collection of asset fingerprints used to identify one or more assets that may be found on a computing device, wherein each unique asset fingerprint includes a list of attributes associated with the unique asset;

executing instructions stored in memory, associated with an automatic asset discovery program, wherein a processor executes the instructions to;

discover existing networks, wherein discovery of existing networks is performed by matching network-based fingerprints with retrieved network information, wherein each existing network corresponds to a unique network-based fingerprint,

gather information associated with one or more networks discovered from amongst the existing networks, wherein the gathered information includes;

identification of computing devices connected to the discovered networks, and

retrieving attribute information associated with each identified computing device,

compare the asset fingerprints with the retrieved attribute information associated with each of the identified computing devices connected to the discovered networks, and

identify the assets on each of the identified computing devices connected to the discovered networks based on matches between the retrieved attribute information from the computing devices and the asset fingerprints;

outputting a list of the assets found on the computing device to a database; and

generating additional asset fingerprints for unknown assets associated with the computing device, wherein the additional asset fingerprints are generated via the automatic asset discovery program that collects attribute information from the computing device for those unknown assets that did not match with any of the compared asset fingerprints, the generated additional asset fingerprints being stored in the collection of asset fingerprints for subsequent use to identify the unknown assets in other computing devices.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more assets includes hardware and software assets stored on the computing device.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more assets includes individual files that are stored on the computing device.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more sources of the collection of asset fingerprints includes backup tapes or backup disk drive images.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the backup tapes or backup disk drive images include a time-based element specifying one or more points in time, and wherein the time-based element is usable by the automatic asset discovery program to identify an existence of one or more assets on the computing device at the specified one or more points in time.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the user selection is provided by the user via a user interface (UI) associated with the computing device.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the collection of asset fingerprints from one or more sources are grouped based on a plurality of different categories, and wherein only fingerprints from the collection of fingerprints belonging to a category associated with the computing device are used for comparison.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the plurality of different categories includes an operating system associated with the computing device.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the gathered information includes identifying network cards associated with each of the computing devices connected to the discovered networks.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the gathered information associated with the discovered network includes a valid address corresponding to a location of the discovered networks.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein gathering information associated with the discovered network further includes identifying active computing devices connected to the discovered networks.

12. A computer readable non-transitory storage medium having embodied thereon a program, the program being executable by a processor to perform a method for automatically discovering assets on a computing device associated with a computing network, the method comprising:

receiving user selection of one or more sources of asset fingerprints, wherein each source includes a collection of asset fingerprints used to identify one or more assets that may be found on a computing device, wherein each unique asset fingerprint includes a list of attributes associated with the unique asset;

discovering existing networks, wherein discovery of existing networks is performed by matching network-based fingerprints with retrieved network information, wherein each existing network corresponds to a unique network-based fingerprint,

gathering information associated with one or more networks discovered from amongst the existing networks, wherein the gathered information includes;

identification of computing devices connected to the discovered networks, and

retrieving attribute information associated with each identified computing device;

comparing the asset fingerprints with the retrieved attribute information associated with each of the identified computing devices connected to the discovered networks;

identifying the assets on each of the identified computing devices connected to the discovered networks based on matches between the retrieved attribute I information from the computing devices and the asset fingerprints;

outputting a list of the assets found on the computing device to a database; and

generating additional asset fingerprints for unknown assets associated with the computing device, wherein the additional asset fingerprints are generated via the automatic asset discovery program that collects attribute information from the computing device for those unknown assets that did not match with any of the compared asset fingerprints, the generated additional asset fingerprints stored in the collection of asset fingerprints for subsequent use to identify the unknown assets in other computing devices.