Network Security: Getting the NAC of It

By Jennifer deJong

July 15, 2008 —  (Page 1 of 4)
The old way was easy. Build a wall to keep them out. Open the door only to those who know the code.

But in a climate where employees routinely conduct business on the road, partner with outside contractors for brief engagements and work from home, the physical boundaries of the enterprise are disappearing. And the police-the-perimeter approach to keeping intruders out is no longer effective for managing network access.

“The perimeter is disappearing fast,” said Cisco solutions marketing manager Steven Song. It used to be enough to put up a firewall and secure the borders and set up remote access for employees working outside company walls, he said. “But there is no clear security boundary anymore.”

As a result, network access can no longer be regulated the same way, said Ray Wizbowski, vice president of secure network access tools provider ForeScout Technologies. Today, a network security strategy has to address the needs of mobile employees who may connect from several different locations in a single day, not necessarily using the same device, he said. “The salesperson needs access from the hotel, from Starbucks, from the customer’s office and from home, after hours.”

In addition to ensuring that an employee is who he says he is—and granting access to e-mail, the Internet and key company data accordingly—network administrators have to make sure that mobile employees don’t subject the company network to new threats such as viruses and worms. When mobile workers connect from the outside, they have missed updates for their machine and they might also have contracted something, said Wizbowski. “You have to manage that risk.”

Is It Safe?
One way to do that is NAC, which stands for Network Access Control or Network Admission Control. NAC is essentially a set of tools and a strategy for securing access to e-mail, the Internet and corporate data that reside on the company network—regardless of where mobile workers are physically located when they request those resources and what device they are using.

Related Search Term(s): Networking, security

Share this link: http://www.sysmannews.com/link/32537