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Did i miss to assetize Virtual Machines !

Auditee : Hi There ! Welcome, What would you like to have? Tea or Coffee?
Auditor: Asset Register !

A comprehensive Asset Register is something which is quintessential for any risk management program. Everything that has to do with risk, follows from here. Information Security Risks are no different that any other type of risks. Having a few people (rarely security pro) building asset register will probably mess up any risk management at the very first stage. It has been seen that people generally miss to address technologically advanced assets (The ones they did not understand a few years ago)  to register in their asset inventory. The most obvious are the virtual machines.

 Every day ,Virtual Machines (VM) are being created on the fly as per business requirement, many of them persist for years and many not so much. There are many questions  like: if that particular VM is of some value? Do I need to consider it as valuable at this point of time, when I have nothing in it? What if my organization is in a business to create and destroy hundreds of VMs  every single day, What should i do then? All these and many more unanswered questions might become overwhelming sometimes. This is because there is no one right answer for all these.

Many believe that this issue has come up due to  scarcity of competent resources who can understand the complexity of such so called "trivial activities". Now a days, security pros are paying more attention to activities that are more popular (about which people are talking/tweeting on internet). It has become a forgotten truth that doing one activity nearly perfect, and the other not even to acceptable levels, will create havoc.

Information security risk management have been constantly looked as a basis before investing/deploying any control at all mature organizations. Every single activity in risk management has the capacity to create a deep and embarrassing repercussions later. It has been recommended by the leaders to put a considerable amount of energy/attention in all of the activities rather than the few we fantasize about. Let it not become faux pas for your organization later!

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