Agentless Discovery
Identifying devices without software installation by using network traffic analysis, API integrations, and protocol inspection. The standard approach for IoT, OT, and IoMT environments.
What is Agentless Discovery?
Identifying devices without software installation by using network traffic analysis, API integrations, and protocol inspection. The standard approach for IoT, OT, and IoMT environments.
Agentless discovery identifies devices on a network without requiring any software to be installed on the target device. It works through passive observation of network traffic, analysis of DHCP and DNS logs, integration with existing infrastructure (switches, wireless controllers, directory services), and selective querying of devices that can safely handle it. The result is a device inventory built entirely from external signals rather than device-resident agents.
This approach is the only viable strategy for IoT, OT, and IoMT environments. Consider what is needed to install a traditional agent: the device must have a general-purpose operating system that supports third-party software, sufficient compute resources to run a monitoring process, a vendor that permits third-party software installation, and no regulatory restrictions on software modifications. Most connected devices in healthcare and industrial environments fail multiple criteria simultaneously.
Agentless discovery also has an operational advantage: deployment requires zero changes to individual devices. A network tap or SPAN port feeds traffic to the discovery engine; the engine classifies everything it sees without touching any endpoint. This means deployment scales linearly with the network rather than with the number of devices — a critical difference when managing 20,000 medical devices across 100 facilities.
Key Facts
- Agentless discovery can identify and classify 95%+ of enterprise devices without installing a single agent
- Deployment via SPAN port or network TAP adds zero latency or disruption to the production network
- CISA explicitly recommends agentless, passive-first approaches for ICS and OT environments
- Agentless methods are the only discovery approach compatible with FDA-regulated medical devices
How ORDR Addresses Agentless Discovery
ORDR's discovery engine is agentless by design, using passive traffic analysis, DHCP/DNS log integration, switch and wireless controller APIs, and deep packet inspection to classify every device on the network. Deployment requires no changes to individual endpoints and no downtime. New devices are automatically discovered and classified as soon as they appear on the network.
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See Agentless Discovery in practice.
ORDR gives security teams complete visibility into every connected asset—and the intelligence to act on what matters most.