* The big boost Juniper's EX switches might ultimately give seems to go way beyond NAC
Let’s take one more look at Juniper’s new access switches that support NAC, which Juniper calls Unified Access Control or UAC. The big boost these switches might ultimately give seems to go way beyond NAC.
Let’s take one more look at Juniper’s new access switches that support NAC, which Juniper calls Unified Access Control or UAC. The big boost these switches might ultimately give seems to go way beyond NAC (Learn more about NAC products from our Network Access Control Buyer’s Guide) .
The EX switches support NAC via 802.1x, meaning they can control access via virtual LAN assignments, but they can also do so at Layer 4 via changing access control lists. This gives customers more granular control over what resources users can reach.
The company says it plans to tie the UAC platform together with other Juniper products via a common management platform, NetScreen Security Manager (NSM).
That vision would enable setting security policies centrally and having them distributed by NSM to the appropriate devices within the network. These could include firewalls, access points, VPN concentrators, multifunction platforms and intrusion detection/prevention (IDP) gear. Of course this would also include UAC policy servers and the switches themselves (Learn more about IDS products from our Intrusion Detection Systems Buyer’s Guide).
This combination of devices being controlled centrally means the possibility of rich new security options. Network access rights could be tied not only to users, devices and how those devices are connected to the network, but also tied to how they behave once they are on the network.
If the IDP, for instance, catches possibly threatening behavior, it could trigger a response within the network such as quarantining the device and demanding a new scan.
This type of thing is possible to some degree already with Juniper gear, but putting all the elements under common management make them simpler to implement and administer and therefore more likely to be used. It bears watching to see how this NMS integration manifests itself.
