Exploring Connections and Asset Relationships

Relationships between assets and/or groups indicate how they are connected in the environment and are shown as arrows linking the asset nodes in the graph. You can also create custom Relationships between assets of different types, as well as assets of the same type.

For example, a common relationship between assets of different types is that between devices and users. Devices are accessed by users. A user managing other users is an example of a relationship between assets of the same type.

Labels tell you the type of relationship that exists between assets/asset groups. For example:

• Last Used by - Indicates there are users associated with the asset.
• Has - Indicates that these assets have vulnerabilities associated with them.
• Affected by - Indicates other assets that affect another asset, such as settings.
• Accessing - Indicates that an asset is accessible or used by another asset, such as users.

Custom Relationships

Create custom relationships to define your own connections between asset types based on your needs and understanding of the environment, business structure, and logical functions.

See Managing Custom Relationships for more about how Relationships work and how to create them.

Viewing Asset Relationships

When some members of one asset group have Relationships to some members of another group or individual asset, hover over one of them to see relationship arrows between the assets.

Exploring Connections

Use the Explore Connections pane to customize what connections to expand. Assets are connected by their Relationship. You can also select to show assets that have no connection to the selected asset. This is useful when looking for unmanaged assets and other scenarios where the lack of connection is important. See Managing Custom Relationships for more about creating Custom Relationships.

For the selected asset, you select a combination of an asset type (devices, software, tickets, users, etc.) and a relationship (Relates to, Used by, Has, Last used by, etc.) between the selected asset in the Asset Graph and the selected asset type. The available asset types and Relationships are determined by the selections you make.

To expand the connections of a node:

1. Click on the node whose Relationships you want to investigate and select Explore connections.
2. From the Connection to expand list, select the asset type whose connections you want to view.
3. From the Relation to expand by list, select the type of relationship between the selected asset and the selected asset type you want to view. Custom Relationships appear in this list. See Managing Custom Relationships for more about how Relationships work and how to create them.
4. In Explore results that have, select one of the following:
   • All Connections - Shows assets that have a connection to selected asset.
   • No Connection - Shows all assets of the selected asset type that do not have any connection with the selected asset. This is useful when looking for unmanaged assets and other scenarios where the lack of connection is important.
5. Click Filter Results to define filter criteria to further refine what assets are displayed in the Asset Graph. See Filtering Asset Groups for more about creating filters.
6. Click Expand. The results are displayed in the Asset Graph.

For example, you are investigating Devices and you want to see all network devices connected to the selected device DEV45. In the Connections pane, select Network Devices as the Connection to expand and Connected to as the Relationship to expand. Select All Connections to see all network devices connected to DEV45.

Viewing a Single Asset's Adapter Connections

Use Segment by Entity to view an individual asset's adapter connections.

To view an asset's adapter connections:

1. Click on a single asset node and select Segment by entity.
   

2. The adapter connections are displayed as square icons. The number of assets using the connection is indicated on the node icon.
   

You can further explore the assets using these adapter connections by expanding and viewing the assets connected to them.