Prioritize an entity discovery source at the source level

Prioritize sources based on timeliness, accuracy, and completeness in Exposure Analytics. When Exposure Analytics aggregates sources, there might be conflicts between field values. With prioritization, you can decide which sources, and which particular fields, are the most accurate.

Exposure Analytics stores high priority field values over low priority field values regardless of the consecutive order of the sources in which the fields came from. For example, two sources might provide different values for the same field. Exposure Analytics keeps only one value for each field: the one with the highest priority. A field value can only be overwritten by a field value with an equal or higher priority.

You can also set a retention period for field values so that the priority reduces or clears after a specific time period. Setting a retention period is useful for aging out a stale field such as an IP address. See Add a field aging rule.

You can prioritize sources at the source level and at the field level. When you prioritize a source at the source level, Exposure Analytics assigns each field value from that source the same priority. You can be more granular by prioritizing a source at the field level, which allows you to assign different priorities to each individual field from a source. For example, a source might have a priority level of High, but the IP address from that source can have an individual field level priority of Highest.

To prioritize a source, complete the following steps:

  1. Select Configure then All configurations.

  2. In the Exposure analytics section, select Entity discovery sources.

  3. Select the pencil icon next to the source you want to set a priority for.
  4. Select a priority level for each type of entity discovery, such as Asset discovery or MAC discovery.
  5. (Optional) If you're decreasing a priority level, you can select Reset to update the priority for existing data from a specified time window, such as Past 7 days. See Reprioritize and reset the priority of a source.

  6. Select Save.

After you change the priority levels, the new priority levels apply as Exposure Analytics processes new data. Existing data that's already stored in the app maintains its existing priority level and doesn't reflect any changes you make unless you reset the entity discovery priority and specify a reset time window.