Out of sight, out of mind. It’s all too easy to forget about asset maintenance when the assets themselves aren’t right in front of you. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this became more evident as employees went home and logged into a virtual workplace instead of coming to a physical space.

Many government agencies, particularly large agencies, face enormous obstacles in simply compiling and inventory of the software and hardware under in their system. The difficulty is understandable: I know of one agency responsible for 220,000 makes and models of medical devices (note that this number refers to “makes and models” only. The actual number of devices is much, much higher). In addition, the devices are online intermittently, and many of them are on air-gapped (i.e., physically separate networks), complicating the use of automated tools for identification and inventory.