Phase 3: Data Normalization & Asset Hygiene

Ensure a high-quality data set by optimizing scan data, achieving high authentication success, and maintaining a clean asset inventory. Aligning with public documentation and consulting your internal teams (for example, your network team) is critical, as results depend on your environment's complexity.

Expected Outcomes

During this phase, you refine your raw scan data into a single, accurate source of truth. This includes:

  • Achieving high success rates for credentialed scans (plugins 21745, 110095, and 19506) to ensure maximum visibility. For more information, see Credentials.

  • Maintaining clean and accurate asset records, purging decommissioned IP addresses and inactive assets, and capturing all relevant asset attributes correctly. For more information, see Asset Age Out.

  • Ensuring networking teams allowlist scanners to guarantee complete scan results.

Why This Is Important

This phase is the foundation of a successful vulnerability management program. High-quality authentication (credentialed scans or agent-based scans) ensures complete and deep visibility across your entire asset base. A clean asset inventory allows you to focus remediation efforts efficiently and accelerates your Mean Time to Remediate (MTTR).

Verification

Verify the success of this phase by confirming the following:

  • Review the Vulnerability Operations dashboard for Authentication Success metrics. For more information, see Dashboards.

  • Discuss findings with your teams (for example, the network team) to ensure the data is complete and accurate.

What to do next:

With clean data, begin prioritizing risk in Phase 4: Policy & Risk Context Configuration.