NAC

Novell's NAC play is a joke

LAN_Guy — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 07:47:55 -0400

Interesting that Novell has gotten press recently about having a NAC solution. The 'news' that they OEM technology from StillSecure is not 'news' at all. This comes from their acquisition of Senforce over a year ago in August 2007. As for integration with other products: they've done nothing as a result of this acquisition in over a year - so what would make anyone think they'll integrate anything any time soon. Just another company jumping on the NAC bandwagon. What a joke...

NAC

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:05:16 -0400

ROFL So this panel of 'NAC experts' are saying its mature yet admit that primary features such as;- least privledge provisioning, unified management. So not only does this become a convoluted mess with each vendor offering a different set of 'fixs', it has a problem with even providing the basic features. Here's an idea, DON"T ENABLE THE SWTICH PORT, no unlawful access, central management and complete auditing control.

Ridiculous

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:00:27 -0400

Every decent NAC vendor offers similar functionality. Known/unknown, trusted/untrusted, time-based scans, etc. NetClarity isn't even a player in the NAC space - their existence isnt't even acknowledged in the Forrester NAC report, nor many other industry analyses. This isn't news.

NAC comparison

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:29:35 -0400

Your title mentions Microsoft's NAC product as being the best yet your NAC comparison page doesn't even list them. What's going on?

NAC? NAck!

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:50:28 -0400

Would it kill you to define an acronym before you use it 24 times?

What is 802.1X? Here's a Technology Primer

Jennifer Jabbusch — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:47:19 -0400

I run into two fundamental problems when I start to talk to customers or audiences about Network Access Control and its related standards and protocols. What are they? Number 1, most folks have no clue what 802.1X actually is. Number 2, for the most part, they don’t really understand what NAC is either. The fact that they’re such common ‘buzz words’ in today’s IT world makes people hesitant to ask questions. You know we IT-folk don’t like admitting we don’t know everything about anything! However, these are rather simple concepts with extremely complicated components and 98% of the technology world doesn’t really know as much as they’d like to about NAC and 802.1X. You’re not alone.

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RE: ConSentry's LANShield gear has NAC

LAN_Guy — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:00:26 -0400

Tim, "In situations where budgets are tight" (btw is there any other situation?), ConSentry is one of the LAST vendors I'd look at based on price. Their list price is about $300 per port - VERY pricey for an edge switch, even if it sorta does NAC and sorta does some pseudo-content filtering. ProCurve and others have some very strong offerings at less than 1/2 the price, which frees up funds for a REAL NAC solution, a REAL content filtering solution, and/or other things. I'm very wary of an "all-in-one" approach like ConSentry's. I'd rather have a separate hammer, screwdriver, and pliers (i.e. the right tool for each job) than some hammer+screwdriver+pliers gizmo that doesn't do any one job particularly well.

Juniper UAC+NAP, Is It Enough To Win NAC War?

Mitchell Ashley — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:29:59 -0400

Network World writer Tim Greene has a good piece on Juniper's announcement that it can now use the Microsoft NAP client in place of Juniper's own UAC client. That makes installations using Juniper's UAC for NAC easier to deploy since they don't have to use the UAC client on machines running Windows Vista and XP SP3. But this is a one-way announcement when it comes to Microsoft NAP as it's what enables NAC client machines to participate in Juniper's UAC solution (and Trusted Computing Group's TNC architecture), not the Microsoft-based NAC product solution. Microsoft has a dual NAC strategy; expose the NAP client for 3rd party NAC solutions, and deliver its own Microsoft-centric NAC solution.

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NAC on-demand = dissolvable agent

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 09:33:09 -0400

Great article Tim. Symantec has developed a dissolvable agent only a couple of years after every otehr NAC vendor did it. This is the type of ground-breaking story we've come to expect from you. Are you paid directly by Symantec, or do you just get kickbacks from the advertising?

Duel of the NAC experts, live tomorrow

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

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Should you invest in NAC? Join the live debate tomorrow

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

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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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Cisco scores highest among NAC users, researchers say

Cisco Subnet — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:11:09 -0400

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.

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Debate with an advocate

Mitchell Ashley — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:23:15 -0400

I wouldn't exactly call either an advocate of NAC. I'm guessing this will more more of a NAC-bash than a NAC debate.

Poor comparison

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:09:45 -0400

This is a pretty poor comparison. NAC is more like a dynamic network firewall, personal firewall means to me the client makes the decision, whereas with NAC it should be the network. The N in NAC stands for Network.

Sophos

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:41:03 -0400

I failed the NAC based on my firewall. While I have Sysgate Security agent installed and running the NAC test only found the windows firewall which is disabled. I question the stats Andy

Hard Savings of NAC

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:38:59 -0400

Although the ROI is difficult to calculate for NAC in the general case, some hard savings can be assessed in specific cases. For example, a customer of ours reduced the workload of its help desk staff by 15 to 20 percent by having more consistent PC configurations and updates. This saved the company $40K annually, which was enough to cover the cost of our NAC solution. Stacey Lum InfoExpress

RE: Why is NAC so Confusing?

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 06:27:54 -0400

because it Not A Comprehensive solution

Symantec's Peer-to-Peer NAC Definition is Limited

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:19:38 -0400

As noted in your article, the problem is it doesn't handle guests or rogue devices which are key reasons for deploying NAC. Their approach is similar to Microsoft IPSec NAP, which has the same limitations. But the compelling arguments for easily installed NAC drove us to extend the concept with our Dynamic NAC solution, which can control all network devices, including rogues, guests, embedded devices, and managed PCs. Stacey Lum CEO, InfoExpress

Good book

Wed, 21 May 2008 05:44:38 -0400

I have a signed copy! Great book for anyone who really wishes they understood all this 'NAC stuff!'