[December 20, 2004]

Cisco Scores Multiple Partnerships for NAC Program

BY JOHANNE TORRES

Cisco Systems Inc. has big plans for the first quarter of 2005. The company announced today that 15 new partners are now delivering or are scheduled to deliver solutions in the first calendar quarter of 2005 that have met test criteria for interoperability with the Network Admission Control (NAC) program. Nearly two dozen partners have joined Cisco since the company opened a broader NAC vendor integration program last month. These solutions are said to give customers a wider array of security choices to help fortify and protect their networked business systems.

The NAC program is an industry effort led by Cisco Systems that uses the network infrastructure to enforce security policy compliance on all devices seeking access to network computing resources, thereby limiting damage from viruses and worms. Using NAC, organizations can control network access to endpoint devices such as PCs, PDAs, and servers that are verified to be fully compliant with established security policy. NAC can also help identify noncompliant devices and deny them access, place them in a quarantined area for remediation, or give them restricted access to computing resources.

Cisco opened the NAC program to all endpoint security, compliance and patch management vendors responding to the increased customer demand for intelligent collaboration among a wide variety of vendors to build solutions that help protect their businesses from security threats. This vendor agnostic effort would provide companies with resources for NAC certification, interoperability testing and marketing. Cisco says that the eventual goal of the NAC effort is to broaden the technology linkages to include vulnerability assessment and security information management, and bring the resulting integration work to the appropriate industry standards bodies.

"Cisco recognizes that no one company can solve the complex and ever-changing threat landscape," said Bob Gleichauf, Chief Technology Officer in the Security Technology Group at Cisco Systems. "A key benefit of Network Admission Control is that it allows customers to take advantage of their existing endpoint and policy security products through an open framework."

Cisco Systems Inc.
www.cisco.com