Cisco scores highest among NAC users, researchers say

A new study by Infonetics Research that queried 242 IT pros at large and medium-sized organizations found that Cisco came up on top as the NAC vendor of choice. Infonetics’ NAC study, User Plans for Network Access Control: North America 2008, covers trends, barriers and implementation plans of organizations deploying a NAC infrastructure over the next two years. It covers user perceptions about the big players: Cisco, Juniper, F5, McAfee, Microsoft, and Symantec. Some 162 respondents said they were NAC users, or planned to quickly become so, with 80 saying they had no plans to deploy by 2009. Of the 162 users, Cisco scored highest overall, although it was in close contest with other vendors in a variety of areas.

In a series of questions asking respondents to rate NAC vendors on their technology, product roadmap, security, management, price/performance ratio, financial stability and support, Cisco scored well, but not in every area. Cisco did, however, come out on top in the most important attribute for an access control product -- security, says Jeff Wilson, principal analyst, Network Security Infonetics Research. (Let's quickly dispense with Cisco's top score, financial security. It was beat by Microsoft on that count but this doesn't mean much. Users are not particularly worried that either Cisco or Microsoft will be going out of business any time soon.)

"Cisco's highest score (after financial stability) is security; over the last few years it has really established itself as a leading player in network security, and really pioneered NAC technology (something that it doesn't usually do ... it usually enters markets once they're established)," says Wilson.

On the downside, it was Juniper, not Cisco (or Microsoft) that came in tops for price-to-performance on NAC gear. And Juniper also came in a close second to Cisco for security. "Cisco really takes a dive when it comes to pricing and price-performance," explains Wilson. "Cisco tends to focus on the total solution sale, not just the box, and this drives its pricing up significantly for NAC."

Another interesting highlight of the study was that more than half of respondents plan to buy in-line NAC solutions, and about a quarter aren't sure if they'll buy in-line or out-of-band solutions. Those who said they were not deploying NAC by 2009 named regulation, cost, and technology as their top three reasons.

Likewise, the top three reasons companies chose to deploy NAC is that they feel it would 1) reduce the level of impact of security problems on the network, 2) protect against data loss and 3) increase their so-called "corporate security postures," says Infonetics. Not exactly sure that it means to increase your corporate security posture, but assume it means making corporate security efforts more visible to the company's power brokers. Not sure that's really is a good thing (security is one of those areas, like network management, that is pretty much invisible when it's working well). But can see the reasonableness in an argument that says it is better to showcase an IT team being  proactive to ward off hackers and data loss rather than taking a see-no-evil approach.

One more thing ... need to plug an upcoming Network World event.

---

Join us for a live Network World's Chat debate on NAC

2 - 3 p.m. ET, Tuesday, July 22
Network Access Control Face-Off: Joel Snyder versus Richard Stiennon

Is NAC a worthwhile technology today? Joel Snyder says yes and Richard Stiennon says no. Come join us for this live debate where two of the industry's most outspoken (and entertaining) security pros will explain their positions. No registration necessary. Just login at http://www.networkworld.com/chat/

---

More from Cisco Subnet:
Juniper's enterprise switch could give Cisco pause
Cisco certs and home labs, a great discussion
The 10 most interesting entries from the Cisco iPrize contest
Go to Cisco Subnet for more Cisco news, blogs, discussion forums, security alerts, book giveaways, and more.