Sites let you group assets together with the Data Processing Services that handle the assets. Sites let you adapt Control Compliance Suite data collection to your needs. You can use sites to represent physical groups of your assets.

Sites can represent a physical grouping of assets. When the deployment spans multiple locations and the locations have slow network links, sites help to optimize data collection. In this model, the site groups all assets at a single physical location with the DPS Collectors that retrieve data from the assets. Data is collected from the assets over local, high-speed network connections. Only communications with other Control Compliance Suite components cross the slow link to the remainder of the network. Further, communications between the collector and other components are designed to accommodate these slow links. Data is compressed before transmission and broken into chunks to facilitate the transmission.

As a variation, you can group the assets that share a single type of network access into a group. A site that groups assets by network speed can help to optimize data collection performance. For example, any assets that are accessible over a low-speed Virtual Private Network (VPN) access can be grouped in a single site. This model isolates assets with slower data collection. In this model, the DPS Collector that collects data from the remote access site is hosted in the same location as the VPN router.

You can also subdivide assets at a single location into multiple sites that are based on their physical location. At a campus with multiple buildings, you can group all assets from a single building into a site. You can also group all assets from a portion of a building into a single site.

Sites can also represent a logical grouping of assets. For example, you can assign all assets in a single department or a small group of departments to a site.

Finally, sites can be used to group DPS Load Balancers, Evaluators, and Reporters. A site without a DPS Collector cannot include any assets. This type of phantom site can be useful when you plan and document the Control Compliance Suite deployment.