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nac

Transitioning to identity-based networking

Network access control (NAC) has certainly had a boisterous lifetime.

Cisco Systems first coined this term in 2005 when introducing an initiative to ensure that only "healthy" endpoints could access the network. In the intervening years, the NAC concept gained popularity, drove tremendous VC investment, and most recently came crashing down in a micro boom-to-bust cycle.

So what's the future for NAC? Out of the ashes, NAC is slowly changing and moving in the right direction toward identity-based networking. Rather than a myopic security tool, identity-based networking initiatives:

• Span the enterprise. NAC was primarily based upon … Read more

Analyzing the shut down of Lockdown

Lockdown Networks, a network access control (NAC) appliance vendor, shut its doors earlier this week. In just a few days, I've read a number of statements about the meaning of this event. A tech meltdown? The end of the NAC market?

Nope, it's nothing that bold or startling. To me, the ramifications are pretty simple:

• It's hard to succeed when you change horses in the middle of a stream.

When I first became familiar with Lockdown, the company was focused on vulnerability scanning to compete with companies like Foundstone, ISS, and Qualys. When this didn't … Read more

SISA announcement hot by summer standards

As we head into the dog days of summer, most technology announcements are lukewarm at best. Usually vendors save their juicy stuff for September and the push toward the end of the year.

With that as a back drop, one announcement last week may have been a curious exception to this rule. Cisco, EMC, and Microsoft got together with a few others and announced the Secure Information Sharing Architecture (SISA). What is SISA? The press release defines it as a "commercial off-the-shelf architecture that was created to make data easily, and securely shared among multinational environments."

Pretty vague, … Read more

Alphabet soup at Interop

It's May in the IT industry and that means Interop is only two weeks away. For those not familiar with Interop, it is a huge networking geekfest in Las Vegas where booze, IP jargon and acronyms flow like water.

At this year's shindig, I anticipate a lot of Interop buzz focused on NAC, or Network Access Control. Of course, this is the generic industry acronym and one of many that basically describes the same thing.

Cisco NAC, aka CNAC, stands for Network Admission Control. Microsoft calls its flavor NAP, or Network Access Protection. And the Trusted Computing Group … Read more