What’s So SUPER About NorthStar SuperLists?

A major setback of many security asset and intelligence tools on the market today is the poor quality of the data they use. NorthStar overcomes these security information ‘black holes’ by consuming information from multiple sources to produce what we at NorthStar call “SuperLists.”

The NorthStar SuperList methodology means the platform is pulling all the available information from multiple management systems to ensure that administrators are getting a complete and accurate view of their environment. Security data isn’t just aggregated but is also scored. NorthStar scores the quality of the gathered information and creates a data mosaic to fill in the blanks. For example, if one data source does not have the host’s operating system information, NorthStar will complete that information with data from another source.

These SuperLists are much more than simple inventories of data – they enable users to understand the complex relationships that can exist between different types of inventories within the environment. This structure is also key to the platform’s efficiency in both database size and performance. Because of this automated process, NorthStar gives organizations assurance of accuracy and presents users with unmatched visibility and actionable intelligence to prioritize remediation and drastically reduce the risk of being breached.

 




Which assets have had specific IP addresses and when did they have them? What relationship does a specific device have to a business application, business unit, or even business service? Which business services are impacted by a certain vulnerability or group of vulnerabilities?
The NorthStar SuperList relationships empower you with a complete and contextual understanding of your environment so you can quickly pivot to new dimensions of protection.

Here’s what our team had to say:

“In short, [SuperLists] are what separate us from any other product that claims to aggregate data from multiple sources. They don’t break down the different types of data as granularly as we do, and thus don’t understand the complex relationships between the different types of data. So, their data ends up being messy and unusable. Whenever anyone asks me what sets us apart, I am quick to point to “the way we process data”, but the foundation of that is the SuperLists.”

– Ulysses Canlas, National Product Specialist

“SuperLists are the backbone of NorthStar. They take in data that may not always be the best from different data sources, then that data goes through the C.A.N. (Clean, Aggregate and Normalize) process to give our customers superior (super) data that is always up to date and accurate in return.”

– Dan Stulgis, Product Support Analyst

“The automation that we have built into the transformation engine never ceases to impress customers.  The tech guys from my latest POC were blown away when I showed them that, once they put their rules in and connect their data sources, “stuff just works.”  The “set it once and it applies forever automatically” is a serious benefit of our product.”

– Kevin Saucier, Solutions Architect

“Aside from the obvious value of aggregating & cleansing data from disparate sources, another main value add is our historical trending feature which eliminates version control issues customers have when attempting to manually run inventories via Excel.”

– Patrick Foy, Regional Sales Rep – Southeast

“The origin of the word super comes from Latin and it is used to describe something ‘above and beyond, higher in quantity, quality or degree, surpassing all or most others of its kind!

Does a ‘Super list’ describe a list of camping equipment, groceries, or a list of people you want to invite to your birthday party? I don’t think so!

When the word super is applied to a NorthStar list it refers to a massive list of data that can only be attained using multiple data sources, jobs, manual data, translations, transform steps, and configuration settings. Only after our Transformation Engine has automatically done all that work, can you hope to attain a SuperList. To gain greater wisdom and clarity, one would only need to ask those who are SuperList experts to explain. “

– Jeff Whichello, Senior Developer

Ready to take your vulnerability management program from average to super? Contact us for a free demo.