Chapter 01: Pulse Overview
Pulse Overview
Pulse is a distributed asset discovery and threat visibility platform, built to detect, assess, and respond to threats to your business networks and devices.
Pwnie Express hardware sensors, distributed throughout your enterprise, feed data to the cloud-hosted Pulse engine.
Pulse discovers and assesses all of your assets - including traditional networking, Bring your own Device (BYOD), and Internet of Things(IoT) devices. In addition to discovery and assessment, the system proactively alerts you to rogue, misconfigured, and unauthorized devices that present risk and can harm your business.
Sensor Hardware
Pwnie Express sensors are distributed throughout your enterprise for global coverage, with sensors positioned in both headquarters and remote locations.
Sensors are connected by Ethernet to local area networks and configured to perform both active and passive scans. In addition, the Pro Sensor may be used to perform light-weight vulnerability scans with the Open Vulnerability Assessment System (OpenVAS).
Sensors are also positioned to perform wireless scans of 802.11 Wi-Fi (2.4GHz & 5Ghz) and Bluetooth environments to detect and fingerprint all devices in the airspace.
Each deployed sensor connects back through its local Internet connection via secure TLS communication over TCP port 443.
Pulse Web Application
The Pulse web application is accessible from anywhere on the web to users with credentialed access (and optionally 2FA), and provides a comprehensive view of all sensor-detected activity across the wired and wireless networks in your environment.
Click tabs along the left side of the dashboard to navigate within the console, access administrative and configuration tools from the upper right Toolbar, or use the global search filter to quickly find what you need in Pulse.
Dashboard
The Dashboard is the initial view after logging into the Pulse web application. It provides global insight and high-level visibility across all of your deployed sensors. You can view asset trends, aggregate reports, identify devices introducing risk, and examine individual profiles of each asset.
Panels along the top of the Dashboard show the total number of discovered assets in your wired network and wireless environment, across all registered sensors, as of the last completed scan.
Below that, Dashboard panels show bar graphs of all new records in the last 30 days.
Within a bar graph on the Dashboard:
- Point to a bar to display the number of changes for that asset type per day—for example, new open ports or newly identified access points.
- Click a bar to display detailed information about a particular type of asset.
Threat Dashboard
The Threat Dashboard provides an enumerated view of the Pulse-discovered risks, from the organizational perspective. Threats are aggregated, categorized, and analyzed to provide summary statistics of threats by severity.
By default, the Threat Dashboard displays all threats that have been active since the user’s last login, and are currently online. Use filter drop-downs to select a particular date range, or specific attributes such as corporate status, sensor, asset type, and so on.
Click any of the charts to see a list of the threats, complete with additional detail on associated assets.
Sensors
Use the Sensors tab to manage sensors in your environment. Click a sensor to display the profile page for that particular sensor.
Additional Views
Pulse web application tabs for Assets, Tasks, Scripts, Alerts, Downloads, and Reports are described later in this document according to the tasks you perform using Pulse.
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