What is Cloud Discovery?

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Cloud Discovery is a core capability of the Lansweeper Platform that automatically identifies and inventories assets across your public cloud environments, such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Unlike Network Discovery, which scans on-premises devices, or IT Agent Discovery, which gathers data directly from endpoints, Cloud Discovery connects securely to your cloud providers through modern, credential-free integrations.

This approach gives IT teams full visibility into hybrid and multicloud environments, ensuring every virtual machine, database, storage volume, and service is accounted for in a single, unified asset inventory.

Whether you’re running dozens or thousands of cloud resources, Lansweeper’s Cloud Discovery helps you understand your complete technology landscape.

What Cloud Discovery helps you do

Cloud Discovery provides instant insight into your organization’s cloud footprint by integrating directly with leading cloud platforms. With secure, machine-to-machine connections, you can automatically collect, organize, and monitor all your cloud assets, without manual exports or credential management.

Cloud Discovery helps IT, security, and operations teams answer key questions about their cloud environments:

• Which cloud assets do we have, and where are they located?

  Automatically discover all resources across Azure, AWS, and GCP accounts. See virtual machines, databases, storage, and more in a unified inventory.

• How are our cloud resources configured and connected?

  View detailed context for each asset and understand relationships across cloud providers and between your on-prem and cloud environments.

• Are we maintaining compliance and governance across environments?

  Track ownership, regions, and configurations to ensure security and compliance alignment across multicloud estates.

• How can we optimize our hybrid IT visibility?

  Bring together data from Network Discovery, IT Agent Discovery, and Cloud Discovery for a unified view of your IT, OT, and cloud assets.

Common use cases

• Build a single source of truth for all cloud infrastructure assets.

• Simplify governance and reporting for compliance and audits.

• Enhance security by maintaining current cloud inventory data.

• Identify shadow IT or unauthorized cloud resources.

• Correlate cloud infrastructure with on-premises systems for unified management.

• Automate asset updates and lifecycle management with integrated inventory.

Key capabilities

• Multi-cloud support: Discover assets across Azure, AWS, and GCP from one interface.

• Secure connections: Uses Machine-to-Machine (M2M) authentication, so no credentials are stored in Lansweeper.

• Flexible discovery configuration: Scan multiple accounts, apply asset filters, and schedule automatic scans.

• Deep integration with inventory: Cloud asset data is fully integrated and enriched within your Lansweeper Site.

• Unified hybrid asset view: See how cloud systems relate to on-prem devices and other IT assets.

• Dedicated asset pages: Each cloud asset includes contextual details, relationships, and tags, consistently mapped across providers.

• Automatic updates: Always benefit from Lansweeper’s latest features and improvements, no manual updates required.

How Cloud Discovery works

Lansweeper Cloud Discovery integrates directly with your public cloud providers, connecting securely through machine-to-machine authentication. Discovery data is then automatically synchronized to your Lansweeper Site, providing dynamic visibility into all cloud assets.

Cloud Discovery connections

Cloud Discovery uses machine-to-machine (M2M) connections to access your cloud accounts securely.

Each connection is configured in your Lansweeper Site and can target multiple subscriptions or projects within Azure, AWS, or GCP.

With these connections:

• No credentials are stored in Lansweeper, improving overall security.

• Scans can be scheduled to run automatically across multiple accounts.

• Administrators can filter which services or regions are included in each scan.

Discovery process

Once a connection is established, Lansweeper Cloud Discovery automatically:

• Enumerates accessible cloud assets across virtual machines, storage, databases, and networking.

• Collects configuration details and metadata such as instance type, region, and tags.

• Syncs results directly into the Lansweeper asset inventory for unified visibility and reporting.

Lansweeper Site

Your Lansweeper Site is the central platform that aggregates and correlates all discovery data.

Within the site, you can:

• View cloud assets side-by-side with on-prem and endpoint data.

• Explore asset relationships across hybrid environments.

• Use reports and dashboards to analyze resource usage, compliance state, and lifecycle trends.

Secure communication

All communication between Lansweeper and your cloud providers uses encrypted HTTPS connections and modern authentication protocols.

• No inbound or outbound custom network rules are needed.

• Data is encrypted both in transit and at rest.

• Cloud environments remain isolated from on-prem infrastructure, preserving security and compliance integrity.

This design ensures cloud data discovery is safe, scalable, and aligned with your organization’s security standards.

Deployment at a glance

Setting up Cloud Discovery is quick and requires no local component installation.

To get started:

1. In your Lansweeper Site, create a new connection for your chosen provider (Azure, AWS, or GCP).

2. Authenticate using machine-to-machine (M2M) credentials.

3. Configure filters and schedules for automated scans.

4. Review and monitor your discovered assets directly in your site.

Next steps

For more information about configuring Cloud Discovery, see:

• Prepare Microsoft Cloud for Cloud Discovery

• Prepare AWS for Cloud Discovery

• Prepare Google Cloud Platform for Cloud Discovery