IBM Partner Pavilion 2.3 manual Priorities for running tasks, Tasks per type of scan

Tasks per type of scan

The following table explains the tasks needed for discovery and assessment scans:

Table 10. Tasks per type of scan

Scan type	Number of tasks
Discovery	1 job-level task
	1 parent task
	1 scanning task
	Note: There is no way to prioritize the order
	in which a discovery scan scans IP
	addresses, therefore there is no reason to
	divide the job into more than one scanning
	task. The scanning task is divided into
	subtasks, however, based on the maximum
	number of IP addresses allowed per subtask.
Assessment	1 job-level task
	1 parent task
	1 base task for each group
	1 scanning task for each asset criticality level
	represented in each group

Priorities for running tasks

To determine the order for scanning your network, each task in a scan job is assigned a priority.

The tasks for all jobs assigned to a perspective run in priority order as follows:

vAd hoc scans run before background scans.

vDiscovery scans run before assessment scans.

vAssessment scans run tasks in the order of the criticality of the assets in the task.

Criticality and assessment tasks

User-assigned criticality ratings indicate the relative importance of assets in a group. A group can contain assets with different criticality ratings. When Enterprise Scanner divides the job into tasks, it creates separate tasks for each criticality level and assigns assets to the tasks with the corresponding criticality. Consequently, the assets in an assessment task are of the same criticality, with the following results:

vAn assessment scan contains at least one task for each asset criticality represented in each group.

vAsset criticality affects the priority of the task.

Example: If a scan job includes a group with one subgroup, and each group

contains assets with all levels of criticality, the job will run as at least ten tasks: one task for each criticality in each group.

Chapter 4. Understanding scanning processes in SiteProtector 73