The new standalone offering provides part of the functionality of the broader Armis platform, and is specifically focused on its asset management and risk assessment functionality.

Today, security provider Armis is announcing the release of their Armis Asset Management solution. It provides part of the functionality of their core platform, but is being sold as a standalone offering to provide enterprises with fuller visibility and effective asset management.

Armis is a 2015 startup which came out of stealth in 2017, and has done well enough since that Insight paid over a billion dollars to acquire them a year ago.

“Initially, the company was focused on unmanaged IoT devices, which were projected then to be a $25 billion market by 2021,” said Chris Dobrec, Armis’ VP of Product Marketing. “The problem is actually even bigger than that because many managed devices have challenges and some can’t  take a traditional security agent. So while we are positioned for IoT security, we really address a broader set of endpoints that cant be managed in a traditional way. Thus was born the Armis platform.”

The platform’s functionality doesn’t fit cozily into a Gartner Magic Quadrant, and Armis talks with analysts covering a number of areas, from endpoint security, to vulnerability management. The platform does three separate things: builds a comprehensive asset inventory; applies the ability to assess risk and do vulnerability management; and remediates threats in the environment.”

The new Armis Asset Management offering is focused around the asset inventory and risk assessment functions.

“The problem we are increasingly seeing, and why we brought this out as a standalone product, is that the plethora of devices today combined with a myriad of tools provides a lack of visibility,” Dobrec said. “This challenge around visibility suggested we could come out with an offering targeted at asset management. Enterprises today have CMDB [Configuration Management Database] data that is often not clean or accurate. They are uncertain how many laptops they have, now that they have to deal with Work From Home as well as BYOD. All this may not be seen by traditional systems. The standalone Armis Asset Management lets customers answer those kinds of questions, and understand what’s in their environment.” It provides them with the single source of truth that has become much harder to get because of the explosion of devices and tools.

“The difference between this and our full platform is that this is focused on identification and risk assessment – identifying gaps and giving ability to automate enforcement,” Dobrec indicated. “It doesn’t give the same full blown threat detection and ability to respond. It does three things. It identifies everything that’s out there – managed and unmanaged. It lets you look at security policies and provides the ability to automatically enforce and remediate. For example, one use case would be to look at the version of CrowdStrike that the customer is running and see if patches are up to date. The third capability is to automate the enforcement.”

Critical to this functionality is Armis’  Device Knowledgebase, which the company touts as the largest in the world, tracking more than 500 million assets daily.

“Our Device Knowledgebase is unique in terms of the number of feeds it tracks and which enriches it,” Dobrec said.

Armis Asset Management also leverages the feeds from all the other existing data tracking and visibility systems, to integrate their data as well.

“We are complementary to these older systems.” Dobrec noted. “Armis Asset Management exists with all these systems which are out there, and lets you aggregate data from those systems so you can correlate and take action.”

This covers and complements a wide range of vendor systems, covering vulnerability management, network access control, and many focused areas of security.

“We have built large numbers of prebuilt adapters to integrate with them,” Dobrec said.

Armis’ sweet spot is in larger enterprises, although they are strong in verticals like health care where a lot of the customers would be classified as medium enterprises. Armis Asset Management is targeted at parts of their install base as well as new customers. Existing customers can apply this on the IT side, where they may not have been using Armis before now.

“It’s the same platform, with the different just being the amount of functionality that’s turned on,” Dobrec indicated.

Armis has a hybrid Go-to-Market model, with the channel encompassing many types of partners

“We really run the gauntlet, from security VARs to telecom service providers to GSIs, and with relationships with folks like IBM who white label us,” Dobrec said. “From the channel perspective, the advantage of the new offering will be the ability to support the platform itself, and to build risk assessment offerings around the platform and bring in services revenue from that.”