Host Insights permissions

Configure permissions for Host Insights.

Limits access to Host Insights/Inventory (Inventory → Endpoints → Host Insights)), which enables you to gain visibility and inventory into the business and IT operational data on all your endpoints. For more information, see Host Inventory.

Unlike Forensics, which is a point-in-time snapshot, Host Insights is designed for broad fleet visibility and hygiene. It covers:

• Host Inventory: Operating system details, installed software, local user accounts, and listening ports.
• Searchability: The ability to hunt for "at-risk" systems across the environment (e.g., finding every server running an outdated version of Java).

Note

It is important to distinguish between Host Insights and Asset Inventory permissions. Host Insights is a deep insight into endpoints that have a Cortex XDR agent installed. Asset Inventory is a broad list of everything on your network (unmanaged devices, cloud buckets, etc.). For more information, see Asset Inventory permissions.

Accessing the Host Inventory menu (from Host Insights) provides different capabilities based on your license. If you have Cortex XDR Enterprise or Cortex XDR NG-SIEM with a Host Insights license, you have access to Vulnerability Assessment. For Cortex XDR Premium or Cloud Security (Posture/Runtime) licenses, you have access to Vulnerability Management. See Vulnerability Management permissions.

Permissions	Description	Roles Example
None	Limits access to the Host Inventory menu.
View	Users can search the inventory, view host details, and browse software lists. They can open the Asset View but cannot trigger management actions.	SOC Tier-1 Analyst: View host inventory and vulnerability data for triage. Security Engineer: View host data for detection development.
View/Edit	Full access to the inventory, including the ability to manage scan settings or trigger manual inventory refreshes.	SOC Tier-2 Analyst: View host data and escalate for file search/destroy. SOC Tier-3 Analyst: Full host insights, including file search and destroy. Threat Hunter: Full host insights for endpoint hunting.

Required and recommended Permissions

Consider adding the following permissions:

Permission	Permission Level	Reason
Agent Administrations	View	Host Insights displays endpoint/agent data. Without this, the host data will fail to load properly. Required.
Query Center	View	Strongly recommended to run queries on the host data.
Asset Inventory	View	Strongly recommended for the user to view Host Insights data directly within the broader Asset View for a seamless experience.
File Search	Checked	Dependency for file search action. Only needed if View/Edit permission is granted for Host Insights and the user needs to search for files across endpoints.
Destroy Files	Checked	Dependency for the destroy files action. Only needed if View/Edit permission is granted and the user needs to delete files from endpoints. This is an irreversible action; grant with caution.