Managing a Growing Fleet of Devices and IoT
From laptops to smart cameras to video conferencing hardware, the number of connected devices an organization must manage keeps growing. Here's how to keep visibility as the fleet scales.
Every organization's device fleet has grown well beyond laptops and phones, smart TVs in meeting rooms, IoT sensors, badge readers, video conferencing hardware, and printers all connect to the network and all need to be accounted for in a security program.
The core challenge: visibility at scale
You cannot secure a device you don't know exists. As fleets grow, the biggest risk often isn't a single vulnerable device, it's the devices nobody remembers deploying, sitting unpatched and unmonitored on the network for years.
Building a device management baseline
- Maintain a current inventory covering every device category, not just laptops and phones, this should include IoT and meeting room hardware.
- Segment device categories onto separate networks where practical, a compromised smart TV or IoT sensor shouldn't have a path to your finance systems.
- Set a default-deny policy for new devices joining the network, rather than allowing anything to connect and reviewing later.
- Track end-of-support dates for hardware and firmware, devices that no longer receive security updates are a growing, often overlooked risk category.
Video conferencing hardware specifically
Meeting room cameras, microphones, and conferencing systems are often internet-connected, always-on devices with microphones and cameras, exactly the profile that warrants careful configuration. Change default credentials, keep firmware updated, and review who can remotely access or control conferencing hardware, the same way you would any other network device.
Retirement and disposal
When any device, laptop, IoT sensor, or conferencing hardware, reaches end of life, ensure it's properly wiped of data and removed from management systems before disposal or resale. Devices removed from active inventory but left registered in management or authentication↗ systems create lingering, forgotten access points.
Fleet security scales through process, not heroics, you can't manually track a growing device population, so the inventory and policy have to do the work.