Scan jobs and related terms

To tune your system correctly, you must understand how scan jobs run and how the options you define in policies affect jobs and subtasks.

Definitions

The following table describes the terms used by the Enterprise Scanner agent in the scanning process:

Table 8. Terms related to scanning jobs

Term

Description

 

 

Criticality

A user-assigned setting that indicates the

 

relative importance of an asset to other

 

assets:

 

v

Critical

 

v

High

 

v

Medium

 

v

Unassigned (the default)

 

v

Low

Scan job

SiteProtector schedules a scan job in the

 

Command Jobs window, either at the

 

beginning of a refresh cycle or when you

 

initiate an ad hoc scan. The scan job divides

 

the scan into subtasks and displays its

 

progress. Scans might not start processing as

 

soon as they are posted if they run only

 

within scan windows and no scan window

 

is open.

 

 

Task

A scan job is divided into tasks as described

 

in “Types of tasks” on page 72.

 

 

Subtask

The portion of a task assigned to an agent at

 

one time. A subtask includes the number of

 

IPs to discover or the number of assets to

 

scan based on settings in the Networking

 

policy for the agent that runs the scan. You

 

should change the following field names:

 

v

Maximum IPs per Discovery Subtask

 

v Maximum Assets per Assessment Subtask

Assets with unassigned criticality

The criticality levels in the definition above are listed in order from highest to lowest criticality. The Unassigned level is intentionally higher than the Low level for the following reasons:

vThe default criticality level for a newly discovered asset is Unassigned because the criticality is unknown until you assign it another criticality level.

vBecause you must specifically assign the Low level to an asset, Enterprise Scanner places it below Unassigned assets because unassigned assets might be of a higher criticality.

Chapter 4. Understanding scanning processes in SiteProtector 71

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IBM Partner Pavilion 2.3 Scan jobs and related terms, Definitions, Assets with unassigned criticality, Term Description