Cisco® Network Admission Control (NAC) helps customers meet their real-world business and security challenges, such as secure guest access, unmanaged assets, unauthorized access, device security policy conformance, and compliance (for instance, HIPAA for healthcare customers and PCI for customers who deal with credit cards).
Helping customers succeed in a global marketplace is Cisco's long-term vision and top priority. As business collaboration increases, customers are demanding more scalable and efficient security solutions. Cisco NAC is an extensive and effective solution that gives customers deployment options.
Cisco has based many of its NAC solution capabilities on customer requests and market needs1. Cisco NAC Guest Server, for instance, is the first solution in the industry that addresses the secure guest access challenge for customers. Cisco NAC Profiler represents the first successful integration between endpoint recognition technologies and policy-based NAC technologies. Cisco NAC Profiler dramatically reduces customer deployment efforts. Going forward, Cisco envisions comprehensive NAC integration with customers' native infrastructures for even greater scalability, effectiveness, and efficiency.
With a focus on delivery and execution, Cisco NAC supports a wide range of endpoint security applications, and provides built-in policies for more than 350 applications from leading antivirus and other security and management software solution providers. Cisco NAC supports all major platforms, including Windows, Macintosh (Cisco's posture assessment for Mac OS is the industry's first), and Linux. Cisco NAC recently passed the Common Criteria Certification, evaluated at EAL2 using the U.S. Government Protection Profile Intrusion Detection System Analyzer for Basic Robustness Environments2. Common Criteria certification demonstrates that Cisco NAC performance has been independently tested and confirmed by an authorized agency, and that Cisco NAC delivers security features and capabilities that meet the strict security requirements of many corporations and government agencies. The Cisco NAC worldwide installed base continues to grow, and now stands at more than 4200 customers-the top position in the industry.
Cisco was positioned in the leaders quadrant of Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Network Access Control in 20093.
Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Network Access Control
In summary, Cisco NAC continues to focus on customer needs to help them succeed. Customers can use Cisco NAC to secure their infrastructure proactively and to protect their valuable information assets in a scalable and efficient manner.
The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2009 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. The Magic Quadrant graphic was published by Gartner, Inc., as part of a larger research note and should be evaluated in the context of the entire report. The Gartner report is available upon request from Cisco.
