NIST is excited to announce the release of the latest NIST Cybersecurity Practice Guide, "IT Asset Management" for the Financial Services sector. The document is a draft, and comments are being accepted.

What's the guide about?

Financial institutions deploy a wide array of information technology devices, systems, and applications across a wide geographic area. While these physical assets can be labeled and tracked using bar codes and databases, understanding and controlling the cybersecurity resilience of those systems and applications is a much larger challenge. Not being able to track the location and configuration of networked devices and software can leave an organization vulnerable to security threats. Additionally, many financial organizations include subsidiaries, branches, third-party partners, and contractors as well as temporary workers and guests; tracking and managing hardware and software across these groups adds another layer of complexity.

To address this cybersecurity challenge, NCCoE security engineers developed an example solution that allows an organization to centrally monitor and gain deeper insight into their entire IT asset portfolio with an automated platform. Using open source and commercially available technologies, this example solution addresses questions such as "What operating systems are our laptops running?" and "Which devices are vulnerable to the latest threat?"

The example solution gives companies the ability to track, manage, and report on information assets throughout their entire life cycle. This can ultimately increase cybersecurity resilience by enhancing the visibility of assets, identifying vulnerable assets, enabling faster response to security alerts, revealing which applications are actually being used, and reducing help desk response times.

The guide is available for download in PDF or for Web viewing in HTML5 from the NIST National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE).

NIST & NCCoE look forward to receiving your comments on the draft guide—the approach, the architecture, and possible alternatives.

The comment period is open through January 8, 2016.

Comments will be made public after review and can be submitted anonymously. Submit comments online or via email to financial_nccoe@nist.gov.

Read the NIST press release for additional information.