NAC is back, tell a friend. Your Challenge Many organizations are looking at network access control (NAC) vendors to help secure their network. The rise of mobile devices and BYOD programs in the business has added new challenges to controlling the network. NAC vendors are marketing themselves as ready to meet these challenges, but not all of them have the specific functionality that makes their solutions ready for the modern network. This vendor landscape isolates key differentiators between vendors, and provides resources to help accelerate your selection process. Our Advice Critical Insight The NAC market is rapidly evolving, and some advanced features differentiate between vendors. Look to these features, in addition to deployment options and price, to select a NAC solution that fits your needs. NAC solutions can come from infrastructure vendors, endpoint vendors, security vendors, or pure-play NAC vendors. Decide which type of vendor fits best with your current IT environment. Impact and Result Understand the NAC market, and which vendors are staying competitive among rapidly changing enterprise networks. Quickly develop a shortlist of vendors that offer solutions covering the entire spectrum of NAC requirements. Be confident that the right potential partners are being considered to meet current and future NAC needs.

1. NAC is surging back. BYOD means more devices on your networks and more potential for problems. NAC is needed to
provide increased visibility and increase control over access.
Integration with other security components, such as MDM, SIEM, NGFWs and IDPS, are increasing the functionality
of NAC while realizing a combined value across multiple products.
Network access control (NAC) was created by Cisco as a concept in 2003, and as an actual capability in 2004. It has
always been a tool to perform a pre-connect assessment of devices before allowing them access to the network and
precious internal resources.
Over the years, NAC has come to include more capabilities, such as continuous vulnerability assessment and
intrusion prevention.
NAS use settled down as the value of pre-connect assessment became muted for most, given the complexity of the
required architecture and its impact on performance.
The proliferation of personal devices created a renowned value for access control. Employers needed a way for
personal devices not to be “guests” while also being centrally enforcing policies around access: NAC.
NAC and MDM vendors began integrating their products to add peripheral security capabilities. A MDM presents the
NAC solution with much greater visibility and information to define and edit access policies.
Integration of peripheral security solutions is accelerating as the potential value realized from a connected security
system becomes known. Several vendors provide bidirectional integrations so that NAC solutions can share data and
create automated or controlled responses from these systems.
The continued disruption in enterprise data centers though accelerated movement to virtualized platforms or cloud
based platforms will change the scope of what a NAC solution must control. Data virtualization enables data pools to
be dynamically delivered to applications allowing for data movement across devices and the network. NAC solutions
will adapt through increased user and role access being based a multitude of inputs.
NAC usage is expected to grow within the near future. In the long term some NAC functions will become embedded
within wired and wireless access methods and infrastructure which will provide downward pressure on pricing.