Network Assessment

What is a network assessment?

A network assessment is a detailed examination of your entire IT infrastructure—your routers, switches, and monitors as well as your security policies, device performance ratings, and management processes.

IT assessments can be conducted proactively or reactively. A reactive IT assessment is conducted when IT administrators need to get to the source of an existing problem. For example, they may be experiencing network latency but unable to identify the root cause. An IT assessment would help them determine whether the issue is resulting from inadequate bandwidth, faulty hardware, packet queuing, or another issue.

Other companies use network assessments more proactively to evaluate the overall health of their IT infrastructure. This allows them to identify areas of improvement and further optimize their networks.

How can an assessment tool help secure a network?

Assessment tools can help secure a network in a variety of ways, including the following:

• IOS vulnerability scanning: Robust network assessment tools integrate with the National Vulnerability Database to automatically identify common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) within Cisco devices. Administrators will receive an alert as soon as a CVE is detected, allowing them to upgrade their IOS firmware accordingly.
• Compliance assessments: IT administrators can leverage network assessment tools to produce out-of-the-box compliance assessments and reports for DISA STIG, NIST FISMA, HIPAA, and PCI DSS to help identify possible security gaps within the network. Sophisticated tools also offer automated remediation scripts designed to correct violations and help administrators get their networks back on track.
• Configuration monitoring: Vulnerabilities typically occur as a result of poorly managed configuration changes. Many network assessment tools are designed to help prevent these mistakes by allowing IT administrators to review and approve proposed changes via integrated change approval workflows. Some tools even use role and access permissions to enable administrators to control who can make changes to devices and configurations.
• Device updates: Devices with outdated software, improper file and directory permissions, or unpatched vulnerabilities can put an entire network at risk. Network assessment tools allow IT administrators to build, test, and run configuration changes against thousands of targeted devices to help ensure they’re error-free.
• Network auditing: Violations of network compliance and operational policies can compromise network security. With the right network assessment software, IT administrators can be equipped to automatically audit device configurations for compliance according to predetermined, policy-mandated controls. Comprehensive software can even allow these administrators to create remediation scripts capable of quickly bringing out-of-compliance devices back on board.

Why is network assessment important?

As your company grows, so does your IT infrastructure. Network assessment can play a critical part in maintaining a healthy, highly functioning network by helping you do the following:

• Monitor device performance: Keeping track of tens, hundreds, or even thousands of devices can be difficult. Comprehensive network assessment software is designed to automatically discover devices and display their data via highly visual network maps. These maps help administrators monitor the fault, availability, and performance of all devices within their network. Depending on the tool, this data can even be displayed via customizable dashboards and charts to help you keep business-critical applications running smoothly.
• Streamline change management: Performing updates across devices is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and often error-prone. Automated network assessment tools help streamline this process through built-in workflows you can use to review, approve, schedule, and push bulk configuration updates across thousands of network devices in minutes.
• Improve security: Network security is a top priority for any IT department. Sophisticated network assessment software will help you quickly scan your network devices’ firmware to identify CVEs and execute remediation scripts accordingly.
• Organize device data: Tracking, documenting, and updating device data (including serial numbers, port details, IP addresses, vendors, and end-of-life dates) can quickly become overwhelming. Network assessment software helps bring order to this complex process by automatically importing device data into an easy-to-access location. This database of information is periodically updated to help ensure IT administrators always have access to accurate information. Administrators can also use these databases to create robust inventory reports based on vendor, location, and device type.
• Keep costs down: Expired maintenance contracts, unpredicted configuration changes, and device failures can result in costly downtime. Network assessments help IT administrators keep their finger on the pulse of their network health, so they can identify faulty devices or upcoming configuration changes before they bring productivity to a standstill. IT assessments also help administrators identify overused or underused resources and allocate them more efficiently and effectively without additional spending.

How do I perform a network assessment?

A network assessment is generally performed using the following four steps:

1. Preparation: IT administrators must first enable SNMP on their devices before they can conduct a network assessment using a network assessment tool. Once SNMP is enabled, it’s important to ensure either the SNMP community settings or the username/password are defined on the devices. IT administrators must also ensure the computer they’re using to perform the assessment has unrestricted access to their network devices.
2. Network inventory: Before device data can be analyzed, it must be gathered. Network assessment software will automatically scan your network and locate devices on it. IT administrators without these tools will need to manually locate and compile the devices they want to include in the assessment.
3. Network analysis: Once the devices have been located, their data must be harvested. Serial numbers, port details, IP addresses, vendors, and contract end dates are just a few examples of the information IT administrators need to gather during this process.
4. Network reporting: Two of the most common types of network assessment reporting including compliance reporting and inventory reporting. Compliance reporting for DISA STIG, NIST FISMA, HIPAA, and PCI DSS can help administrators identify potential security violations. Inventory reports based on vendor, location, device type, and other factors can also help facilitate network performance and device health improvements.

How does network assessment work in SolarWinds NCM?

SolarWinds^® Network Configuration Manager uses a network device scanner leveraging SNMP to help admins regularly locate devices on their network, including devices from a wide range of vendors.

All the device scanner needs to conduct its search is a list of IP addresses, ranges, or subnets along with SNMP credentials. Administrators can manually select when they want scans to occur, or they can schedule automatic discovery sessions to account for any recent devices they’ve added to their network.

Once NCM has discovered the necessary devices, it imports their data and displays pertinent information via a network topology map. These dynamic network maps can help IT administrators quickly and easily view all devices within their network. The software also scans and polls all MIBs on devices to obtain performance metrics and help administrators monitor the health and functioning of their critical network devices.

NCM can help you conduct network assessment reporting—both compliance reporting and inventory reporting—using a comprehensive network of built-in, out-of-the-box reports designed to display information in easy-to-read formats.