Sophos is adding NAC to its desktop security suite, addressing one of the pressing problems of NAC deployment: that it means yet another client on endpoints.

Of course the Sophos NAC software actually is another client, but it is deployed with a set of other security applications that customers are deploying anyway. Plus the Endpoint Security and Control platform that now includes NAC is managed along with the suite.

Briefly, the yet-another-client argument is that IT staff already has too many clients on standard-issue laptops and desktops, creating management, monitoring and updating problems. Adding NAC as a separate client also means integrating it with other software on the endpoint - meaning more work that requires separate training.

Customers have already decided it’s worth it to deploy the Sophos software, so adding NAC causes no more deployment problems than they’d already accepted. And the NAC client is managed via the management platform for the whole suite.

With NAC in Endpoint Security and Control, IT professionals don’t have to integrate the software with the endpoint’s firewall, antivirus software, intrusion prevention client, application screening and antispyware protection that is also in the suite.

The price of this NAC client is as good as the price of Microsoft’s network access protection (NAP), as it comes along with the price of a product that has broader applications. It’s not free, but it costs nothing more than what you would have paid before NAC was added.

This is a very sensible approach to NAC. Other endpoint security-suite software vendors offer NAC, but it is a separate product. (Compare NAC products)

For those who like NAC as a separate client, Sophos sells its NAC client and policy server separately as well.

Tim Greene is senior editor at Network World.