OPSWAT, security vendor to the security vendors

By Ellen Messmer, NetworkWorld.com, 04/10/06

San Francisco-based OPSWAT, founded by Benny Czarny four years ago, is a small firm comprised of a few software engineers doing a lot of detail work in network-access control on behalf of much larger security vendors. In that role, OPSWAT has turned out to be a neutral party among the many vendors now supporting the network-access control security technologies from either Microsoft, Cisco, or both.

Network-access control is commonly defined as policy-based methods for deciding what users are to be allowed onto the corporate network, generally after determining that anti-virus, VPN, patch management or other security-related procedures are in order.

As consultant Joel Snyder recently wrote in Network World, there is a formidible competition for NAC right now, with Cisco's Network Admission Control (NAC) program and Microsoft's Network Access Protection (NAP) being among the most discussed, with vendors often supporting one or both.

Czarny, whose company we profile this week,
says his firm is a member of both Cisco NAC and Microsoft NAP. Czarny's own view is that everyone, vendors and customers alike, would benefit if both initiatives came together.

"The NAC and NAP camps basically use the same tools to see if a machine is clean or not," Czarny points out.

The only significant difference between the Microsoft and Cisco specifications for endpoint security is that for the equipment contact point, Microsoft wants you to communicate with Radius servers while Cisco's focus is on edge devices, Czarny said.

"It really makes sense for NAC and NAP to join forces," Czarny noted.

Microsoft and Cisco continue to hold out the chance that could happen, and customers might want to ask them why it hasn't yet.

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