New players in the New Data Center

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Mirage Networks' Mirage NAC

Network-access control tools are often touted for their ability to ensure that potentially vulnerable clients in remote locations don't connect to a network. Mirage NAC takes that concept a step further.

It not only conducts preadmission checks, using the McAfee Foundstone Vulnerability Management System, but also continually checks for anomalous behavior while clients are connected. Any offenders are isolated. Mirage detects anomalous behavior by maintaining a map of unused IP addresses and sending an alert whenever a device tries to access one of them, says Chris Liebert, senior analyst with The Yankee Group. "It's a good approach," she says.

Customers include high-tech companies National Instruments and OnDemand Software, law firm Hogan & Hartson and the Pennsylvania State University. Users report Mirage NAC has dramatically decreased the time it takes to find problem devices on their networks, Liebert says.

Chris Hanson, IT project manager for Kern Schools Federal Credit Union in Bakersfield, Calif., is one such user. What he likes best about Mirage NAC is that it's agentless. "So many security products want you to have their special client to watch this, that and the other," he says. "Pretty soon it becomes a nightmare."

Competitors include Arbor Networks, Cisco, Lancope and Mazu Networks. Mirage's biggest challenge is to improve the NAC's reporting capabilities and to make it more selective about what alerts it reports on, Liebert says.