Asset classes

Asset classes offer a way to group related assets together for easier viewing and risk assessment.

The typical asset types are hardware, software, data, personnel and facilities.

• If you have a lot of hardware, you may want to define different hardware types as asset classes, such as network devices, desktop computers, servers, mobile devices, storage, etc.
• If you have a lot of software, you may want to define different software types as asset classes, such as own products, DNS/file/web servers, office applications, development software, databases, etc.
• You should define asset classes for the major types of information your organisation stores or processes. For example, contracts, data processed for clients, financial information, customer information, intellectual property, a code base, staff and HR information, etc.
• Your staff should be listed as assets. The asset classes may describe staff as a whole or their department or role, depending on which makes more sense for your organisation.
• You may have intangible assets subject to risks that need to be recorded, such as intellectual property rights or customer relationships.

Asset classes allow you to organise your assets, and sometimes it makes more sense to assess the risk against the class than individual assets. For example, if you have an asset class of all staff, a risk of phishing attacks applies to the whole class, not the individual assets (which in this case could be staff in each department).

Updated on: 17/06/2024