I was recently reminded of a famous quote by former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”
Nowhere is that statement more valid than in IT asset management. Most of us agree that IT asset management (ITAM) is the least sexy topic in cyber. However, you can’t protect what you don’t know about. Without visibility into your information assets, their value, where they live, how they relate to each other and who has access to them, any strategy for protection would be inherently incomplete and ineffective.
