Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention can be used to assign policies to assets and enforce the policies in a dynamic environment. In one embodiment, the present invention includes discovering a plurality of assets using a plurality of distributed software interfaces over a network, each asset being having a plurality of attributes. A user can input receiving a group filter criterion, which can then be used to create and display a plurality of virtual asset groups to the user, each virtual asset group containing representations of assets having the same attributes for the received group filter criterion. In one embodiment, the present invention provides the ability to apply policies directly to virtual asset groups, and the policies are applied to virtual asset group members dynamically.