Building An Asset Inventory

Access Gate automatically accelerates the creation of an asset inventory by observing network traffic. Using NetFlow analysis, the platform identifies devices communicating on the network and presents them for review and registration—without requiring active scans or manual data entry.

This approach is well suited for on-premise and industrial environments where passive discovery is required and downtime is not acceptable.

Automatic Device Discovery

Access Gate discovers devices by analyzing NetFlow records exported from the network. Each observed device is identified and tracked based on its network behavior.

This eliminates the need to manually populate an inventory and helps surface unknown or unmanaged devices already present on the network.

What Information Is Collected

Discovery relies on NetFlow metadata and includes:

  • MAC addresses
  • IP addresses
  • Ports and protocols
  • Traffic patterns

Note Discovery is based on NetFlow metadata only. Access Gate does not perform deep packet inspection or payload analysis.

Asset Table

All discovered devices appear in the tables on the Monitors page.

For each device, the table displays:

  • Observed IP addresses
  • Device Name
  • Type
  • Upload & Download Traffic
  • Protocols used
  • Location
Monitors page showing assets in a lab environment

This view provides a live, read-only snapshot of devices detected on the network that are not yet managed as assets.

Creating Assets from Discovered Devices

Discovered devices can be converted into managed assets with a single action.

To create an asset:

  1. Go to the Monitors page
  2. Locate the device in the table
  3. Click Register Asset
  4. Review the pre-filled asset details generated from traffic analysis
  5. Adjust metadata if needed (name, role, description)
  6. Save to register the asset

Once created, the asset becomes part of the managed inventory and can be used across Access Gate features.

From Inventory to Enclaves

Asset discovery is the first step toward access control and segmentation.

After devices are registered as assets, you can:

  • Group assets into security enclaves
  • Define identity and role-based access policies
  • Monitor authorized and unauthorized communications
  • Apply Zero Trust controls without changing the underlying network

For next steps, see Protecting an Asset with Enclaves