* Cisco to sell Great Bay's Beacon Endpoint Profiler as part of the Cisco NAC line
Cisco is teaming up with Great Bay Software to provide a function that is key to the success of NAC, but that Cisco can’t supply by itself.
Cisco has an agreement to sell Great Bay’s Beacon Endpoint Profiler as part of the Cisco NAC line.
Beacon Endpoint Profiler, which is sold on an appliance, automatically discovers and profiles all devices attached to the network. Knowing what devices are already on a network is essential to deploying NAC.
Since NAC grants or denies access to every device trying to get on a network, the NAC policy server must have a comprehensive list of those devices. Legitimate devices with no policy set for them would be indistinguishable from rogue devices. (One Great Bay customer reported that 60% of the devices on his network were incapable of reporting to the NAC server. These devices include printers, VoIP phones and the like.)
In large networks, doing a manual network inventory would be costly and so time consuming that chances are it would be out of date before it was complete.
The software has further utility in that it can track devices as they move from port to port on the network, making it possible to identify users associated with suspicious activity.
Cisco plans to repackage the software under its own name, Cisco NAC Profiler, which will be part of the Cisco CAS/CAM dashboard. Cisco says the software won’t be available until September.
