Discovery of electronic assets using fingerprints

Abstract

A system to conduct automatic asset discovery inventory of a company's computing assets from backup images stored on a backup system. In more complex embodiments, user interface tools are provided to provide a choice of sources of data from which to conduct said inventory discovery. The user can choose between backup images, the actual computing systems and other nodes on one more networks of a company or third party software. If third party software is chosen, data gathered by the software about the network topology and attributes of systems on the network is gathered and converted to an intermediate data format. This intermediate data format is then converted to a data format understood by said automatic asset discovery system and then fingerprints stored in said automatic asset discovery system are compared to said data and conclusions drawn about the attributes of the network and systems on it. These conclusions are then stored in a repository along with conclusions drawn from comparison of fingerprints to said backup images and/or said computing systems themselves.