Network Access Control Essentials
There are some things that a NAC solution simply must do, and establishing baseline targets for your NAC implementation is essential for its ongoing success. Here we’ve listed the core requirements you must cover, no matter how small or large your network.
NAC Essentials
- Assessment of endpoints prior to, and during, network connection for a desired enterprise-defined security state. Based on that assessment, endpoints can be blocked, allowed, messaged, and/or assisted with remediation.
- Ability to leverage the existing user store to assign policy by group and authenticate every endpoint prior to allowing any sort of connection.
- Ability to direct users to appropriate places in the network based on user identity and the security posture of each machine. Ability to use the current network to provide this.
- Ability to continually reassess endpoints on the network for policy compliance, and quarantine all non-compliant users.
- Provide a centrally managed solution that scales to the environment, provides policy reporting and system auditing, and gives a complete picture of the state of endpoint security in the enterprise. Requires no hardware upgrades or appliances to be placed in the network.
- Provide a user experience that can be as visible or as transparent as you deem necessary.
- Support of all major security vendors for policy assessment and easy definition of custom elements for assessment. Also, support for all partners/consultant/guest security software for policy definition and assessment. One central place to define policy checks for all users.
- Seamless integration of network access control into the current enterprise environment.
