IoT Security can work through Cortex XSOAR and an on-premises XSOAR engine to retrieve information from switches about the devices connected to them. To do this, XSOAR uses SNMP. The engine begins by establishing trust with an entry switch—usually at the edge or aggregation layer—by sending it an SNMP community string for read-only access. After this, the engine queries the switch for information about the devices connected to it; specifically, it learns the switch name and IP address, device MAC address and IP address, and (for Cisco Catalyst switches) the name of the physical port on the switch to which a device connects. The XSOAR engine also queries the entry switch for the IP addresses of neighboring switches on the network. It collects device information from them next and also gets a list of their neighboring switches as well. XSOAR continues collecting device information and learning about other switches until it has queried them all.

After collecting information through SNMP, IoT Security adds newly discovered details about existing devices in its inventory and also adds newly discovered devices to its inventory. When IoT Security learns of a new device through SNMP, it displays Discovered via snmp in the Source column for it on the Devices page.

You can also filter the inventory to display only those devices learned through SNMP. Click the Filter icon (   ) above the inventory table, choose Source and SNMP, optionally click the Save changes icon (   ) if you want to save the filter for future use, and then Apply.

IoT Security then displays only devices that match the filter; that is, devices discovered through SNMP.

To retrieve this information, the XSOAR engine does an SNMP walk for the following object identifiers (OIDs):

Make sure the switches on your network allow read-only access from the Cortex engine to these OIDs.

Cortex XSOAR runs a recurring job to query switches. Running the job on a daily basis is recommended although you can set the interval between jobs to occur more or less frequently as you want.

Using SNMP to collect information from network switches requires either a full-featured Cortex XSOAR server or the purchase and activation of an IoT Security third-party integration add-on license, which comes with a free cohosted Cortex XSOAR instance. The basic plan includes a license for three integration add-ons, one of which can be used for SNMP discovery. The advanced plan includes a license for all supported third-party integrations.