How Censo is built
For readers who already know they need it and want to see the engineering. What runs where, what crosses the network, what is kept.
The architecture
The probe
A service inside your network. Runs the scans, holds the credentials you issue it, and connects outbound only.
The control plane
Normalises, reconciles by natural key, stores. Never initiates a connection towards you.
The console
Planning, review and reporting. Multi-tenant, with customers isolated from one another.
Security of the platform itself
The questions a security officer asks before the product demo starts.
Transport
HTTPS with mutual certificate authentication, outbound only
Enrolment
token-based probe enrolment, revocable
Secrets
encrypted at rest
Tenant isolation
enforced and verified at database level
Credentials
read-only accounts you issue and can withdraw
Audit trail
who signed in, and who changed what
Probes and scheduling
One probe is the starting point, not the design.
Multiple probes per customer
Grouped by site, so a remote office is scanned from inside it rather than across a tunnel.
Automatic job failover
If a probe stops, its jobs move to another instead of queueing until someone notices.
Discovery plans
Recurrences and asset pools: what is scanned, how often, from where.
Daily catalogue updates
Vulnerability catalogues refresh on their own, every day.
What happens to a single data point
From the wire to the console.
Collection
the probe reads it from the source, with the credential you issued
Normalisation
vendor formats become one shape
Reconciliation
matched to an existing asset by natural key, not by guesswork
History
the change is recorded, so the question “what changed” has an answer
What Censo does not do
Read this section before the others if you are comparing products. Whoever stays after reading it stays for the right reason.
It is not monitoring
It does not watch availability or raise incidents when a service degrades.
It is not a SIEM
It does not collect and correlate logs across your estate.
It does not apply configuration
It reads and reports. It does not change your devices.
It does not make you compliant
It measures what an inventory can measure, and declares the rest.
See it on your own network
One probe, one site, one afternoon — including what could not be read, and why.