Cisco NAC

Duel of the NAC experts, live tomorrow

Cisco Subnet — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:01:09 -0400

Should you invest in NAC? Join the live debate tomorrow

Microsoft Subnet — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:56:02 -0400

Users prefer Cisco NAC over Microsoft NAP, researchers say

Microsoft Subnet — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 19:56:12 -0400

Over on Cisco Subnet, there is a long meaty post about how NAC users perceive Cisco as superior to other vendors in the market, including Microsoft. This comes from a study by Infonetics Research (User Plans for Network Access Control: North America 2008). Infonetics queried 242 IT pros about their NAC plans for the next two years and asked for user perceptions on the big players: Cisco, Juniper, F5, McAfee, Microsoft and Symantec.

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Microsoft NAP: Above The NAC Fray

Mitchell Ashley — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 02:36:13 -0400

Recently Network World reporter Tim Greene wrote about the longer-term view of Network Access Control (NAC), the broader market that Microsoft NAP fits into. Half the 17 companies Gartner considers NAC vendors are legitimate start-ups, and obviously the market won't support 17 NAC vendors, so we'll continue to see a shakeout, such as the recent closing of Lockdown Networks. Having formerly been part of the NAC market as CTO at StillSecure, one of the vendors that has risen as a NAC market leader, I still enjoy the competitive battles between NAC vendors.

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Cisco issues critical patch for NAC flaw

Cisco Subnet — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:25:25 -0400

Cisco issued an urgent security advisory on Wednesday warning users about a critical vulnerability that exists in the company's NAC appliance. The vulnerability allows an attacker to obtain the shared secret that is used between the Cisco Clean Access Server (CAS) and the Cisco Clean Access Manager (CAM). An attacker can obtain the shared secret from error logs that are transmitted over the network. Obtaining this information could enable an attacker to gain complete control of the CAS remotely. Cisco has forgone its biannual patching cycle to release this patch, The vulnerability rating is listed as a 10 on the CVSS scale.

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Cisco readies Microsoft-compatible NAC; start-ups worried?

Cisco Subnet — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:40:20 -0400

The promise (or threat, whichever way you want to look at it) of Cisco's Microsoft-compatible NAC gear, which the network giant says will be ready in about a month, will mean that startup NAC vendors will have to step up their games to stay ahead of Cisco and Microsoft in the features they offer, according to Tim Greene's Network World NAC newsletter.

Cisco NAC being compatible with Microsoft network access protection (NAP) means users can deploy NAC without having to also deploy a NAC client. Instead, endpoints using Microsoft Vista can use the built-in NAP client, Greene writes.

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Another NAC vendor bites the dust: Cisco to blame?

Cisco Subnet — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:00:18 -0400

Another NAC supplier closes its doors but is Cisco really to blame?

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Cisco NAC Appliance: Enforcing Host Security with Clean Access

Inbox — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:05:06 -0400

CISCO NAC APPLIANCE: ENFORCING HOST SECURITY WITH CISCO CLEAN ACCESS

by Jamey Heary, Jerry Lin, Chad Sullivan and Alok Agrawal

Who better to explain the workings of Cisco Network Admission Control than Cisco staffer and security expert Jamey Heary, along with colleagues Jerry Lin, Chad Sullivan and Alok Agrawal? Heary, CCIE No. 7680, is a security consulting systems engineer at Cisco, where he works with its largest customers in the northwest United States. When not consulting, he is a frequent blogger for Cisco Subnet.

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Cisco, Avenda enable multivendor network access policy management

Cisco Subnet — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 18:06:52 -0500

Cisco has signed a pact with Avenda Systems that will allow the policy management vendor to provision the TrustSec features embedded in Cisco switches with Avenda's eTIPS software for identity and role-based network management. Avenda says the licensing agreement will enable eTIPS customers to manage network access policies for Cisco NAC, Microsoft NAP, as well as Cisco TrustSec from a single policy management system.

More about TrustSec here.

More from Cisco Subnet:
* Cisco vs. Juniper Episode II: Enterprise switching

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Cisco NAC Appliance gets some new features

jheary — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:35:44 -0500

Cisco recently released version 4.1(3) of their NAC Appliance product line. 4.1(3) has a slew of new features in it that I thought you might be interested in. The most noteworthy, to me anyway, is the addition of a web agent client delivered via java or activeX. This web agent client does not require admin privileges to run, unlike the traditional clean access agent.

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Sneak peek of 'Cisco Network Admission Control: NAC Framework Architecture and Design' book

Cisco Subnet — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 21:34:38 -0400

This week's sneak peek of a free chapter from a Cisco Press book is an excerpt from Cisco Network Admission Control, Volume I: NAC Framework Architecture and Design, by Denise Helfrich, Lou Ronnau, Jason Frazier, and Paul Forbes.

Here's the blurb from Cisco Press:

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ForeScout to Cisco: Watch out

Cisco Subnet — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:51:57 -0400

Network access control vendor ForeScout is launching its CounterACT product squarely at Cisco, and sending its VARs to target Cisco accounts, according to ChannelInsider.

ForeScout CounterACT 6.2 supports VoIP and allows for policy enforcement and endpoint identification, without dropping any calls or connections, reports ChannelInsider. The Web site also reports that partners can expect around 30% - 35% services on top of the sale.

See how ForeScout stacks up against the rest, including Cisco, in Network World's Clear Choice Test score card.

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Schools dump Cisco

Cisco Subnet — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 16:43:27 -0400

Not very good news for Cisco in the education market today. Network World's Jim Duffy is reporting of two schools that are switching out Cisco switches for equipment from rival vendors due to what they say is greater feature/functionality from competitive offerings, and lower prices, reports Duffy.

Fayetteville State University (FSU) in Fayetteville, N.C., is replacing more than 50 of its 280 Cisco switches with ConSentry equipment because of the embedded network access control (NAC) capabilities of those switches. FSU said it suffered problems with Cisco Clean Access NAC appliance, which kept going down.

Duffy reports:

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Winners of Jamey Heary's Cisco NAC book

Cisco Subnet — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 19:10:49 -0400

Thanks to all those who entered to win a copy of Jamey Heary's recently published book Cisco NAC Appliance: Enforcing Host Security with Clean Access. Before we give a roll call of the winners, here's the answer to the trivia question:

Question: At the beginning of July, Cisco signed an agreement to sell an appliance that automatically discovers and profiles all devices attached to the network. What is the name of the manufacturer of that product?

Answer: Great Bay. See this story.

The winners are:

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Cisco planning oneNAC for easier NAC deployment

Cisco Subnet — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 13:37:13 -0400

Cisco is developing oneNAC, a hybrid of its NAC schemes with the aim of making it easier for customers to maintain, deploy and scale up Cisco NAC, according to a story by Network World's Tim Greene.

According to the story:

The upgrades would make it possible for customers to buy Cisco’s NAC appliance - the NAC option most of its customers opt for first - and later migrate to its network-based NAC Framework architecture without having to swap out as many elements.

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Enter to win a Cisco NAC book

Cisco Subnet — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 15:10:01 -0400

We've secured 15 copies of a brand new Cisco Press book to give away. The book won't be out until next week, so it will be truly a hot-off-the-press book! Cisco NAC Appliance: Enforcing Host Security with Clean Access, by Jamey Heary, with contributing authors Jerry Lin, Chad Sullivan and Alok Agrawal, provides you with all the information needed to understand, design, configure, deploy, and troubleshoot the Cisco NAC appliance. You will learn about all aspects of Cisco NAC, including configuration and best practices for design, implementation, troubleshooting, and creating a host security policy.

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