OK, Alan and and Dominic, what is the deal? Why are you guys beating each other up? In fact, why is Alan getting into a punching match every other week with either another NAC vendor or someone who doesn’t like NAC? Why is there always such controversy over NAC?
I believe there is one big reason for this: no one does it exactly the same. From pre-admission to post admission to with or without an agent to inline or out of band, yada yada yada. But when all of these guys and gals start going for each others throats, it just makes me wonder if it is all ever going to come out in the wash. Which one will succeed? Will one form of NAC win out in the long run?
There may be one form of NAC that is a better fit in most environments, but I am not sure that any one form will beat out the rest. Environments are still different, and there are always solutions that fit better in those different environments.
Of course, if all the NAC vendors get together for a cage match…
Vet
I like to think of it in terms of usefulness. You don’t have to answer this question, but maybe think about how many medium-large implementations of NAC you know of that not only got started, but were actually successful and not painful?
After that, all the rest is defensive blocking and tackling…
Of course, you may know of plenty implementations, but my impression of NAC roll-outs has been that lots of people talk about it, but there are just no real success stories.
“I believe there is one big reason for this: no one does it exactly the same. From pre-admission to post admission to with or without an agent to inline or out of band, yada yada yada.”
hmmm… reminds me of HIPS… perhaps it will go the same way or perhaps NAC vendors will look at what the HIPS ‘industry’ learned as an object lesson and actually sub-categorize themselves appropriately… vague, overly generic terms don’t really help the buyer…