Whirlpool takes Cisco NAC for a spin

After a pilot lasting more than three months, Whirlpool is confident that network-access-control technology will not only help keep its global network more secure, but also play a role as the company implements a new generation of Web services applications.

Alex Petrov, global principal network architect for the Benton Harbor, Mich., home appliances company, presented his NAC findings at the recent Network World IT Roadmap Conference & Expo in Chicago. Whirlpool’s tests of Cisco NAC products verified that they performed their basic functions as advertised, disallowing network access to client machines that were not sufficiently secure. While the technology may cause a temporary increase in help-desk and desktop-support costs, longer-term the Whirlpool tests indicate NAC will reduce overall security costs and risks by introducing more self-service and automation.

Perhaps more importantly, however, Petrov expects NAC, together with other network security technologies, will position Whirlpool to take advantage of Web services internally and externally. “We’re talking years away,” he said in a follow-up interview. “But we absolutely think this is where enterprise architecture is headed, and we need to know what kind of security mechanisms we need to have in place to support it.”

In pursuit of NAC

Before embarking on its NAC test, the $18 billion company explored alternative technologies, but fairly quickly decided that NAC would be fundamental to its multitiered security strategy, Petrov says. Whirlpool then explored NAC products from Cisco, Microsoft and others. “To us, it was really important to have two things: compatibility with existing infrastructure, and futureproof technology, something that would not require fork-lifting,” he says.

Click to see: Whirlpool gives NAC a spin

Key to going with Cisco was the fact that Whirlpool already was standardized on Cisco equipment for its LAN and WAN infrastructure. “It wasn’t that hard of a decision,” Petrov says.

For its pilot test, Whirlpool sought to simulate multiple environments, including its 1,500-user headquarters, 800 users at a major plant and 100 users at a regional distribution center. “Essentially it was a scaled-down version of our production network with NAC elements added to it,” Petrov says. Specifically, those elements were Cisco NAC software on switches and routers, Cisco Security Agent on clients and the Cisco Monitoring, Analysis and Response System to identify and isolate potential security threats.