Offboarding in one page
Everything a custodian has not returned, including kit in repair and anything recorded lost, with the control to end every session they hold. A team identifier works as a custodian for machines no one person owns.
Hardware asset register
An asset register that keeps the whole path of each device
Every device, who holds it, its condition and the state of the whole estate on any past date. The register is designed around the questions asked during offboarding, incident response and ISO 27001 assessments.
A lifecycle for each device
An asset is registered into stock and then moves. It is assigned to a custodian, moved between sites, sent for repair, recorded lost or stolen, wiped, retired or disposed of. Each of those is an event appended to a log, and the state you see is computed from that log.
That distinction is why an auditor can rely on the register. A spreadsheet tells you what somebody last typed. An event log tells you what happened, in order, with who recorded it and when, and the register can be rebuilt from it for any date you are asked about.
The estate as it stood
Choose a date and provenance rebuilds the register from the event log for that day: what was held, by whom and at which site. Retired and disposed equipment is included if it was part of the estate on that date.
Encryption as evidence
Confirmed, confirmed absent or never recorded. The three states are counted separately, and the endpoint population is reported on its own because Cyber Essentials and A.8.1 ask about it.
Disposal that can be proved
A certificate reference, a method, the financial position posted to a ledger and a human approval. Nothing leaves the books on a machine's say-so.
An IT asset inventory, and how this differs from a CMDB
This is an IT asset inventory: every device the organisation owns, who holds it, its state and its history. It is not a hardware bill of materials in the sense CISA uses. That is a document a vendor gives a buyer, listing the parts inside a product, the companies that made them and where. provenance keeps this register beside the software you ship, so each machine and the components running on it are in one system.
A configuration management database (CMDB) is a related tool with a different purpose. It models configuration items and their relationships to support change and incident processes, and discovery agents usually populate it. provenance is a register of record. Nothing is discovered automatically. A person or an API asserts every entry, every change is an event with a timestamp and an actor, and the history is hash-chained so it can be checked. Use a CMDB for a dependency graph of services, and provenance when you need to state what you owned on a date and prove it.
The register rebuilds the estate as it stood on any past date. Most people buy an asset inventory to answer that question. A view of the current state alone cannot answer it.
Where it joins the software half
A deployment can name the machine a release runs on. Most estates do not record it. With it, a critical vulnerability in a dependency turns into a list of physical machines and their custodians. The asset page shows what is running on each machine, and the deployment map shows which machine each release is on.
Hardware and software share one register. You do not have to reconcile two systems that count your servers differently.
Corrections are recorded
Sometimes a fact about a machine is entered wrongly, or its encryption status is verified later. You correct it with an amendment, which needs a reason and keeps the previous value in the audit trail. Events themselves are never edited, so an auditor can see which entries were corrections and which record what happened next.
Hardware register questions
What does provenance hold for hardware?
Two things. Your hardware asset register: every device you hold, its serial number, who holds it, where it is, its state and its history (ISO 27001 Annex A.5.9). And, for the products those devices are, the hardware bill of materials in CISA’s sense: the parts inside, the companies that made them and where, as the vendor supplies it or as you declare it from the device.
How is this different from an IT asset management tool?
Most of the register works like other asset registers, with three differences. It is bitemporal, so you can rebuild the estate for any past date from the event log. Disposal requires a certificate and a human approval. And deployments can name assets, so a vulnerable release can be traced to physical machines.
Can it answer what a leaver still holds?
Yes. The list includes equipment that is out for repair or was recorded lost or stolen while in their care, so a leaver is not shown as clear while one of their laptops is still with a repairer. You can end their sessions from the same page.
How does disk encryption evidence work?
provenance records encryption in three states: confirmed, confirmed absent and never recorded. A device that nobody has checked is shown as a gap in the register and is never counted as unencrypted. An assessor can see which devices are unencrypted and which have not been checked yet.
What happens when a device is disposed of?
Disposal is a controlled, terminal step. It requires a disposal certificate reference, a method, the financial position and a human approval, and no API key can ever perform it. The asset leaves the working set but is never deleted, and it still appears when you look at the register for an earlier date.
Can I import an existing fleet?
Not yet. Assets are created one request at a time through the API, which slows down onboarding a large fleet, and CSV import is on the roadmap. When you contact us, tell us the size of your estate and we will explain what onboarding involves.
Start with the estate you have
Free for personal use. For a fleet, tell us its size and we will tell you plainly what onboarding involves.