At this point, you added your scan credentials to Lansweeper, which means you are ready to direct those credentials towards their purpose: accessing a wealth of information about your devices, including hardware and software details, security vulnerabilities, and more.
As soon as you install Lansweeper, a default scan is started of the network it finds itself a part of. This default scan consists of scanning your Active Directory and the IP range configured during the setup. However, this initial reconnaissance is merely a starting point.
Types of scan targets
Lansweeper offers a variety of methods to scan your network, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Depending on your personal needs and preferences, you can use one or more of these scanning methods.
You can use Lansweeper to perform scans on various targets, including IP addresses and ranges, Active Directory, and a range of Cloud resources like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft 365.
To set up Lansweeper’s extensive scanning capabilities, you’ll first need to configure your preferred scan targets to ensure the discovery of your entire network.
Create scan targets
When creating scan targets, aim to encompass a representative slice of your network. This ensures a comprehensive insight into your network. Here are some scan targets we recommend as a trial:
- IP Range: Select a minimum IP range that includes a variety of devices such as servers, workstations, and network switches. This gives you a broad overview of your network's health.
- AD Domain: If your organization uses Active Directory, configuring a scan target within your AD domain can be incredibly effective. It allows you to leverage the structure and relationships defined in your directory service.
For each of these targets, ensure you map the necessary credentials you added earlier. This step is crucial for the scan to access and assess the security of the devices within the target range effectively.
For more information about creating scan credentials, check out Scan credentials.
Organize scan schedules
A robust scanning strategy is not just about what you scan, but also about when and how often the scans occur.
- Individual scan schedules: Set up a scan schedule for every scan target. Either choose to scan the target every recurring amount of time, every day at a certain time, or on specific days at certain times.
You could even select no set scan schedule if you want to manually trigger the scan.
- Scan target now/Scan all targets: For immediate concerns or after making significant changes to the network, select either the individual Scan target now buttons, or the global Scan all targets button to get real-time feedback.
- Enable/Disable all: The ability to enable or disable all scan schedules allows for adjustments in response to the evolving needs of your network.
Putting scan targets and schedules into action
To further illustrate Lansweeper’s flexibility, we’ve highlighted a more advanced scenario combines scan targets and scan schedules with multiple scan servers.
In situations where you have more than one scan server in your environment, you can select the specific scan server you want to use for the particular scan target you’re configuring. This means that you could assign an identical scan target to multiple scan servers, each target having their own distinct scan schedule. For example, you can set up the same IP range to be scanned every morning by one scan server, and every night by another scan server.
