Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Excited about NAC

Notwithstanding that the Network admission control acronym N.A.C. actually is an Arabic slang that means, ummm, copulation, I am more excited about NAC today than I was when I started evaluating it a year ago. Today, we see a market with some very mature solutions being offered by mega companies like Juniper and niche players like Bradford & Advensys. My wish list of NAC features include the following:
* Support for 802.1x authentication to an out-of-band RADIUS server
* Multiple enforcement methods, not just VLAN ID (i.e. ACL's etc).
* Passive and active network profiling/classification of all devices that connect
* Central management interface to manage infrastructure and view all connected users and devices
* end-point compliance checker client (persistent and dissolvable)
* Integration with TNC IF-MAP

But the market rumblings do give one reason to pause. The following issues have me scratching my head and waiting for whats going to happen?
* The break-up of Aruba and Bradford Networks,
* 3Com/TippingPoint acquired by HP... but HP recently dumped its own NAC product to more closely work with Microsoft.
* McAfee getting into the OOB-NAC market

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