CIS Controls v8·Control 2.1·critical·Component: Identify

What this control requires

Establish and maintain a detailed inventory of all licensed software installed on enterprise assets. The software inventory must document the title, publisher, initial install/use date, and business purpose for each entry; where appropriate, include the Uniform Resource Locator (URL), app store(s), version(s), deployment mechanism, and decommission date. Review and update the software inventory bi-annually, or more frequently.
— CIS Controls v8, Control 2.1

In plain English

Establish and maintain a detailed inventory of all licensed software installed on enterprise assets. In practice, this means you can prove you establish and maintain software inventory-level controls on a defined cadence.

Why it matters

The CIS Controls are an industry-vetted, prioritised defence: skipping a safeguard widens the attack surface that the safeguards above and below it assume is closed. Audit frameworks (FedRAMP, PCI DSS, HIPAA) all cite CIS as evidence of due care.

This control is rated critical in the source catalogue. Treat gaps here as production incidents in the risk register, not housekeeping.

What an auditor looks for

A CIS-aligned reviewer wants to see (a) which Implementation Group you are targeting, (b) a documented owner for the safeguard, and (c) a tooling or process artefact (config, scan output, ticket) that proves the safeguard runs on the cadence the control demands.

Within Identify, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Control 2.1) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

Asset Inventory

AWS. AWS Config Aggregator across every account + region gives a real-time inventory; ship the daily snapshot to S3 and surface drift in Security Hub.

Azure. Azure Resource Graph plus Defender for Cloud's inventory blade enumerates every subscription; export to Log Analytics for retention and Workbooks for reporting.

GCP. Cloud Asset Inventory exports a daily feed of every resource and IAM binding; query via BigQuery and alert on appearance/disappearance.

Endpoints. Pipe MDM telemetry (Intune / Jamf / Workspace ONE) into your CMDB so laptops and phones are inventoried with the same rigour as cloud resources.

Policy Management

Docs. Keep each policy in version-controlled Markdown alongside the code that implements it; ship a signed PDF snapshot at each annual review and link the SHA into the SoA.

Operational checklist

  • Establish And Maintain. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
  • Document. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
  • Scope: software inventory, uniform resource locator, url, app store, version, deployment mechanism, decommission date, enterprise.

Evidence to collect

  • Policy Document. A signed and version-controlled policy / standard / procedure document.

Signed policy or standard documents the safeguard. Focus: Establish and Maintain a Software Inventory.

Common pitfalls

  • Inventories that exclude SaaS, shadow IT and ephemeral cloud resources (Lambda, Cloud Run, K8s pods) miss the assets where most modern incidents start.
  • Policies that no engineer has read; the version in Confluence drifts from the version that's actually being enforced.

Related controls in CIS Controls v8

References

Topics: governance riskasset inventorypatch managementpolicy management