Top 9 IT Asset Discovery Tools for 2024

IT asset management is the process of tracking, maintaining and cataloging both tangible (hardware) and intangible (software) IT assets of a company. The entire process of managing the asset lifecycle is eased with the deployment of IT asset management software.

Therefore, software asset management tools are a valuable resource for the acquisition, optimization, and disposing of appropriate IT or software assets.

What are the Challenges with Software Asset Management?

Enterprises large and small often complain about the misuse of IT assets, lost assets, higher procurement and maintenance costs, and more.

• Faulty asset audits: As IT assets are managed, received, and purchased in a distributed manner. The lack of visibility often leads to faulty asset validation and audits.

• License compliance: IT vendors often charge a high penalty for expired software licenses during audits. Organizations are often unaware of software licenses being used across departments and end up making compliance errors.

• Asset hoarding: Often, departments purchase software applications that aren’t used to frequent use. Plus, new assets are continuously being procured without thoroughly discussing their usage. All these compounded together lead towards increased assets cost.

• Shadow IT: Sometimes, there is either a lack of awareness regarding the acquisition processes or a lack of knowledge about negotiating software contracts in an organization. This continues to be a considerable challenge for organizations while managing software assets.

• Agentless technologies: Organizations trust agentless technologies to reduce the costs and hurdles associated with software installation. However, such technologies don’t provide detailed information for optimizing the software spend.

• Time-consuming excel sheets: Software asset management is a daunting task given the complexity of recording the details of assets or incidents in excel sheet forms.

What Are IT Asset Discovery Tools?

IT asset discovery tools automate IT asset management practices and ensure complete visibility into hardware, software, and other IT assets being used in your network.

The software maps IT assets across locations regarding their owners, contracts, license renewal dates, and more. It tracks both inactive and active IT assets in the on-premise, cloud, virtual and mobile setup.

What Is IT Asset Discovery Tool Used For?

IT asset discovery tools are used for monitoring your network infrastructure as well as specific databases. You can also use these software platforms for:

• IT asset’s monitoring and risk scoring besides actionable security rating of digital assets

• Quick identification of hacking attempts, leaked data, and phishing attempts for domain squatting and trademark infringements

• Detecting vulnerable and outdated software through composition analysis

• Discovering the network devices for mapping the network topology

• Troubleshooting network devices

• Extracting information related to device status, packet loss, and average response times

• Pen testing tools for detailed scan reports with all technical details of existing vulnerabilities

• SQL queries and PRTG sensors for monitoring specific databases and accessing detailed statistics for these

• Standardizing and centralizing the processes of multiple site management

• Managing software licenses and tracking registered/unregistered devices on the network

• Gathering details regarding the configuration, maintenance schedules, and connection logs for reducing server downtime and threat incidences

• Conducting patch management & internal compliance audits and assessing the specific software licensing requirements

• Patch management for both ensuring that there are timely software updates.

Benefits of Using Asset Discovery Tools

Asset discovery tools are critical for optimizing every IT asset and disposing them off anytime the cost of maintenance exceeds the benefits. Some other benefits of using the IT asset management software are:

• Periodic scans: IT asset discovery tools ensure periodic scans and audits for a network to track all updates made in an IT environment. Any changes made during the domain or network scans are immediately notified, and you can also schedule automated re-scans here.

• Importing assets: Digital asset management systems let you import all the asset details with a simple remote scanning technique. The software also makes it easy to auto-synchronize the asset data from remote locations.

• Secured database: Software asset management tools provide an inbuilt credential library to help you maintain a secured database of the domain and network credentials. The software detects unlicensed license modules to block malware from entering your devices.

• Details of network architecture: Asset tracking software provides an in-depth understanding of the network architecture. These are critical for producing detailed insights on license status, retired & installed assets.

• Reducing costs: IT asset discovery tools help businesses in reducing software and hardware costs. It provides detailed information about unused licenses, device lifespans, and asset requirements in the near future.

Comparison of Top 9 IT Asset Discovery Tools

• Cacti
• Zenmap
• Spiceworks
• Acunetix
• Netsparker
• Virima
• Qualys
• Lansweeper
• SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor

Let us go through the list of top IT asset discovery tools for acquiring, optimizing, and maintaining IT assets at low costs.   

• Cacti

Best for: Small and medium businesses, startups & agencies

Cacti is a digital asset management software offering SNMP protocol for monitoring the devices on a network. The DAM software is best for its polling process that updates devices automatically anytime the equipment lists change.

The best IT asset management software also supports fault management and operational monitoring framework as part of its graphing and data storage functionality.

Cacti Monitoring Tool Features:

• Auto-padding option for graphs with custom data-gathering scripts
• Remote data collection and graph aggregation
• Theming engine for domain and group management
• Automated advanced templates for trees, graphs, and devices
• Automation & discovery, along with data source creation controls
• Cacti plugins as part of extensible attributes
• RRDTools for Round Robin database
• jQueryUI theming system

Free Trial: Free and open-source IT asset discovery tool

Free/Open-Source: Yes

Pricing: Cacti is a free software asset management tool that can be used without any charge.

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• Zenmap

Best for: Small and medium businesses, web professionals

Zenmap digital asset management system is considered best for its Nmap graphical front-end capabilities for network scanning and security auditing.

The IT asset management software tracks and updates individual node details as host names, addresses, port status, and device types. Zenmap even makes it easy to save multiple scans in a searchable database.

Zenmap Software Features:

• Issues and document activity tracking for discovering vulnerabilities
• Pre-scripted and automatic vulnerability scanning for meeting compliance needs
• Perimeter scanning of operating systems, servers, and network devices  
• Configuration monitoring and network application testing with static code analysis

Free Trial: NA

Free/Open-Source: It’s a free & open source IT asset discovery tool

Pricing: It’s completely free with source code available

Suggested Read: Best Paid and Open Source Network Monitoring Tools

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• Spiceworks

Best for: SMBs and large organizations, agencies, pentesters

Spiceworks asset management system provides operational details of devices by registering every piece of equipment available on your network. The digital asset management system provides metrics for detailed reporting on switches, routers, networks, and assets.

Spiceworks IT asset discovery tool offers asset upgrades anytime an application starts overloading the network. You can also use the software for generating an itemized list of all IT assets.

Spiceworks Asset Management Features:

• Compliance, configuration, and capacity management with customizable branding
• Diagnostic tools for IT asset, email and issue management & issue auditing
• Kerberos-based authentication and DNS-based naming
• Synchronized directory updates across multiple servers
• Centralized location for managing the network and storing application data

Free Trial: Available

Free/Open-Source: Free version available

Pricing: Request a call back for more information regarding pricing and free demos.

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• Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner

Best for: Small business owners, individuals, startups

Acunetix digital asset management software supports the scanning of passwords, encrypted areas, and complex multi-level forms with its powerful inbuilt macro recording technology.

You can use the IT asset discovery tool for detecting vulnerabilities like misconfigurations, XSS and SQL injection, and more. Further, Acunetix vulnerability scanner can easily find unlinked pages for fast scanning.

Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner Features:

• Schedule and prioritize incremental scans based on traffic load
• Helps manage vulnerabilities and integration with the existing devices
• Quick scanning of complex web apps and all other pages
• Easy to find SPAs or single-page applications and complex paths
• Integration with issue trackers and CI/CD and flexible APIs

Free Trial: No

Free/Open-Source: No

Pricing: Please connect with us if you need price support, free demo, or expert consultation for this DAM software.

Acunetix offers the following paid plans based on the total number of targets.

• 5 Targets ₹1,87,788
• 15 Targets ₹3,00,462
• 20 targets ₹3,75,577

By paying an extra charge of ₹1,87,788, you can add further five targets. Or ten more targets by paying an additional amount of ₹3,00,462.

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• Netsparker

Best for: Medium and large business organizations, website development agencies

Netsparker asset management system ensure vulnerability scanning and automate the application security testing process. The asset management system offers complete application visibility for identifying vulnerabilities and proposing remediation measures.

What makes the DAM software unique is its interactive dynamic scanning approach for discovering every part of a web asset and analyzing all potential vulnerabilities.

Netsparker Tool Features:

• Behavior-based and signature testing for detecting all vulnerabilities
• Integrated SDLC security testing with control permissions for all users
• Actionable feedback for producing secure codes & eliminating delays in continuous scanning
• Advanced scanning and local crawling for retesting only specified vulnerabilities
• Proxy mode and login flow for replaying and importing HTTP requests
• Centralized vulnerability visibility and management for uploading scan results to the server.

Free Trial: No

Free/Open-Source: No

Netsparker Pricing: Please connect with our sales team for price details, free demo, and expert consultation services.

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• Virima

Best for: Small & medium businesses, agencies, and large organizations

Virima DAM software offers service mapping and automated infrastructure visualizations for IT asset management and control. The digital asset management software supports agentless IP scanning with multiple customizable probes for detecting virtual and physical assets.

Virima Software Features:

• BSM (business service map) for insightful visualization of dependencies and relationship
• Dependency mapping for identifying groups for migration
• Portfolio governance for a complete overview of regulatory compliance, asset inventory & licensing usage
• Service management for reducing incidents and assessing risk changes.

Free Trial: No

Free/Open-Source: No

Pricing: Virima discovery package is based on the total number of assets that must be discovered automatically. ITSM and ITAM packages are licensed per agent or per user. At present, Virima charges no money for self-service portal users.

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• Qualys

Best for: Startups, small, medium, and large enterprises

Qualys vulnerability management is a digital asset management system that provides powerful IT compliance and security solutions for identifying known and unknown IT assets.

The IT asset management tool automatically detects critical misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. Qualys DAM software is ideal for accessing alerts in real-time on network irregularities and compromised assets.

Qualys Vulnerability Management Features:

• Instant control and visibility of a company’s IT assets
• Six sigma accuracies for eliminating the possibility of false positives
• Data center security for vulnerability management and active/passive scanning
• Instant visibility and complete compliance control of all the existing integrations
• Endpoint security from all attacks and suspicious activities

Free Trial: 30-days trial support

Free/Open-Source: You can create your basic account for free.

Pricing: Qalys free IT asset discovery tool allows you to manage unlimited assets.

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• Lansweeper Asset Management

Best for: Medium and large businesses, agencies

Lansweeper IT asset management software has its functioning based on a Deepscan engine that discovers and scans the assets across all types of IT environments.

The software offers an overview of network-related decisions, projects, and tasks for managing the IT inventories. You also get access to hundreds of network and IT analytics reports.

Lansweeper Asset Management Features:

• Detailed IT inventory reports of mobile endpoints, cloud instances, and on-premise environments
• Automatic switch port mapping for discovering devices connected to the port
• Patch Tuesday reports and performance counter monitoring
• Agentless scanning and detailed analysis of workgroup assets & data

Free Trial: Yes

Free/Open-Source: Free plan for up to a hundred assets.

Lansweeper Pricing: Yearly plan of Lansweeper for one asset at ₹87.   

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• SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor

Best for: Small to large enterprises

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is deployed for discovering the available network devices automatically and visualizing their critical path. The software asset management tool helps with dynamic mapping of network topology as well as tracking the performance metrics.

The IT discovery tool can also be used for drilling down the specific nodes for accessing device information, node status, and packet loss.

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor Features:

• Multi-vendor support for network monitoring
• Deeper visibility through network Insights
• Intelligent maps
• Easy troubleshooting with NetPath and PerfStack
• Smart scalability for large environments
• Advanced alerting

Free Trial: 30-days free trial

Free/Open-Source: No

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor Price: SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor pricing is available on request with the vendor.

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Related Categories: Asset Management Software | Fixed Asset Management Software | Vulnerability Assessment Tool