Adjust Discovery configuration

The Discovery service uses various attributes as relevant inputs when searching for web assets, web applications, and online services that might belong to your organization. By adjusting the settings, specifying inclusions and exclusions you can change the scope of the Discovery search. This is particularly useful if you have a vast number of results that you want to narrow down to a specific domain, IP address, or organization name.

This document explains how to adjust the settings that are used by the Discovery service to determine what domains are included or excluded in your Discovery list.

Adjust Discovery configuration

The Discovery configuration page allows you to customize the types of matches that the Discovery service will make when building your list of discovered web assets, web applications, and online services.

To adjust the types of matches used by the Discovery service:

1. Select Discovery > Configuration from the left-side menu.
2. By default, all options are enabled. Clear or keep the following options enabled according to your preferences:

• Enable predictive risk scoring: Predictive risk scoring allows you to prioritize your web asset discovery results according to their potential risk before you scan them.
• Match on organization name: By default, the Discovery service will use the organization names extracted from SSL certificates of websites in your Discovery list to perform an additional search for other possible websites with a matching organization name in their SSL certificates.
• Match on email addresses: The email matching function will use the second-level domain of your master account for matching websites. Clearing this setting will ignore the second-level domain of your master account.
• Match on websites URLs: Website matching will use the second-level domain of any target you add to match any additional websites with the same second-level domain. If you clear this setting, then the Discovery service will add or remove entries into your Discovery list when you add or remove a Target.
• Match using only registered domains: By default, the Discovery service will exclude any web services that do not have a publicly available DNS record. You can clear this option if you wish to widen your search to possible websites, even if no DNS record for them exists.

3. Click Save for your changes to take effect.

Specify website inclusions

In the Discovery > Configuration > Website inclusions section, you can add specific search elements to instruct the Discovery service to find those particular web assets and add them to your Discovery list.

To specify results you want included in your Discovery list:

1. Select Discovery > Configuration from the left-side menu.
2. Navigate to the Website inclusions section.
3. In the following sections, enter your elements for inclusion:

• IP Addresses: When specific IP addresses are added to the inclusion list, the Discovery service uses this information to search in its database for matching candidate websites to add to the Discovery list.
• Organization: When specific organization names are added to the inclusion list, the Discovery service uses this information to search in its database for candidate websites that match the organization names within their SSL certificates and adds them to the Discovery list.
• Second Level Domains: When second-level domains are added to the inclusion list, the Discovery service uses this information to search in its database for candidate websites with the specified second-level domains and adds them to the Discovery list.

4. Click Save for your changes to take effect.

The IP addresses, organizations, and second level domains you specified will now be included in the Discovery list.

Specify website exclusions

In the Discovery > Configuration > Website exclusions section you can specify domains, IP addresses, and organizations that you do not want the Discovery service to include in the list. This is particularly useful if you want to intentionally narrow the scope of your Discovery results.  

To exclude particular results from the Discovery list:

1. Select Discovery > Configuration from the left-side menu.
2. Navigate to the Website exclusions section.
3. In the following sections, enter your elements for exclusion:

• IP Addresses: Websites hosted on the specified IP addresses will be excluded from the Discovery list.
• Organization: Websites with the specified organization names in their SSL certificates will be excluded from the Discovery list.
• Top Level Domains: Websites with the specified top level domains in their hostname will be excluded from the Discovery list.
• Second Level Domain: Websites with the specified second level domains in their hostname will be excluded from the Discovery list.

4. Click Save for your changes to take effect.

The IP addresses, organizations, top level domains, and second level domains you specified will now be excluded from the Discovery list.