Getting started: Landscape inventory

Overview

This dashboard offers a helicopter view of all of the components that make up your IT landscape, such as hardware, OS, binaries, and network traffic to stay on top of any abnormal changes in your landscape inventory.

In addition, this dashboard was designed as a template to be copied or edited to get more familiar with creating and editing dashboards.

Key Features:

• General statistics of the makeup of the endpoint inventory across chosen time ranges.

• Detailed dashboards drilling down into hardware, OS, and binary inventory.

• Real-time visibility into endpoint security applications and OS versioning status.

• Monitoring of incoming/outgoing network traffic.

• Dynamic filters to drill down into location, device type, and platform.

Dependencies

None

Changelog

v1.0.0.0 - pt 2022 - Initial Release

Pack Structure

The pack is comprised of a single dashboard of the same name.

• Getting started - landscape inventory

Getting started - landscape inventory dashboard

This dashboard utilizes tabs to separate content. An Overview tab provides an at-a-glance inventory of user accounts, devices, and binaries with key breakdowns for each. This is followed by dedicated tabs for device hardware, device operating system, binaries, and network traffic.

Dashboard filters common to each tab allow the selection of specific platforms, device types, binaries, and connection types. Multiple localization filters are provided using context and Geo-IP methods, along with a location type filter to allow the operator to select onsite or remote devices.

Please note: The filters for Country, State, and City are based on and restricted by the level of Geo-IP localization that has been configured.

Overview

This overview tab is comprised of three sections, User accounts, Devices, and Binaries. Key breakdowns for each measure support a simple summary KPI for each section.

Device hardware

This tab is split into three sections, Device hardware overview, Hardware components, and External Monitors.

The first section provides a count of devices with key breakdowns by hardware type, country, manufacturer, and model. These breakdowns can be narrowed down further if desired using the dashboard filters.

For example, with the application of three filters, the number of Windows laptops in the Paris office is shown below, with a focussed breakdown on the manufacturers of those laptops:

The hardware components section shows the number of devices in your landscape by CPU model, installed memory, disk capacity, and type.

Finally, the usage of external monitors with laptops and desktops is shown. A distribution chart of external monitors is shown with a breakdown by the manufacturer, but please be aware that for laptop manufacturers such as Lenovo, Dell, etc., this monitor count includes the internal laptop screens as well.

Device operating system

This tab provides a comprehensive inventory of the operating systems and build versions in use across devices in the landscape.

For both Windows and macOS, the number of devices running supported versions of these operating systems is shown together with breakdowns by OS releases and builds. Most importantly, the number of devices running unsupported operating systems is also shown; these devices should be investigated and either upgraded or replaced, as they pose a potential security risk to the organization.

Binaries

This tab provides key insights into the binaries used throughout the organization. The most popular binaries, including and excluding Microsoft, are shown in bar charts. Dashboard filters can be very useful here to drill down into the required information.

The second section of this tab shows the most used browsers and a version dispersion table for the Nexthink Collector is also provided.

Network traffic

This tab provides an at-a-glance summary of the network traffic within the organization. Filters can be used to drill down into locations, location types, or other measures. A bar chart shows the number of devices per connection type, but please be aware that over long periods such as the last seven days, some devices could be connected via ethernet and Wi-Fi…

Network traffic by binaries is shown. Whilst applications like ZScaler and MS Teams are likely to be at the top of these lists, these charts can be useful to identify non-corporate applications that are consuming a lot of traffic, like Netflix or Spotify, for example.

Finally, the network traffic used by servers is shown. Please be aware that this will only show servers with the Nexthink collector installed, not the whole server infrastructure of the organization.