What is perspective?
When you scan a group of assets, you anticipate and interpret results based on the
location of your agent relative to the location of the assets. Scanning a group of
assets from inside a firewall, for example, produces different results than scanning
the same group of assets from outside the firewall.

Perspective identifies network location

With Enterprise Scanner, you use perspective to define logical locations on your
network. When you add an agent to SiteProtector, you assign it to a perspective
that identifies the agent’s location on the network. When you configure a scan, you
choose the perspective from which you want to scan the IP addresses or the assets
in the group.

Default perspective

Enterprise Scanner contains one predefined perspective, Global. If you plan to scan
from just one location on your network, you may use the default perspective. Or,
you can create a user-defined perspective to use instead of the default.

Technical requirements

The network location that a perspective represents must meet the following
technical requirements:
vA perspective is a set of subnets from which you expect the same results from
scanning or monitoring your network regardless of where you connect the
agents within that set of subnets.
vWithin that set of subnets, no network traffic is blocked and no network address
translation occurs.

Use for distributed scanning

Perspective makes it possible to easily distribute the workload among multiple
agents:
vIf you have just one agent in a perspective, that agent performs all the scans that
run from that perspective.
vIf you have two or more agents in a perspective, Enterprise Scanner
automatically balances the distribution of tasks among the agents in that
perspective.

Flexibility

Identifying agents by perspective instead of by a specific name or IP address
makes it easier to respond to changes in your scanning environment. If you add an
agent to a perspective, then that agent automatically shares the workload with the
other agents in that perspective. If you remove an agent from a perspective that
contains multiple agents, the remaining agents continue to run the scans assigned
to that perspective. In either case, no additional configuration is required, and
there is no interruption to your scanning cycles.

Use meaningful perspective names

The name you use for a perspective should reflect the implications of scanning
from that location. Using the example of setting up agents inside and outside a
68 Enterprise Scanner: User Guide