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
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
