The foundational technology behind Censys was designed by researchers at the University of Michigan. This team also created the ZMAP SCANNER, which helped popularize Internet-wide scanning. Their original goal was to provide researchers with a way to measure if Internet security was actually improving. To accomplish this, they needed to track security vulnerabilities on every reachable server and device on the Internet, and collect as much data as possible about those hosts. The result was a searchable map of the Internet, which became a powerful tool for security researchers.