Key Criteria for Evaluating Network Access Control Solutionsv1.0

1. Summary

Network access control (NAC) lies at the intersection of network security and visibility. It offers visibility over all network entities and determines whether a device is compliant and can connect to the rest of the network.

After entering the market nearly two decades ago, NAC has become increasingly important over the past few years because the typical enterprise network perimeter has both enlarged and blurred. Since the adoption of bring-your-own-devices, edge locations, internet of things (IoT) deployments, and a generally more fluid workforce, the attack surface is vastly different than it was in the mid 2000s.

To understand NAC, let’s first look at its sequence of operations:

1. Identifies and profiles devices: First, as soon as a device requests to connect to the network, the NAC solution must understand what the device is, where it’s coming from, and what operating system it uses. Modern NAC solutions can extract all this information without any agents installed on the device.
2. Verifies credentials and assigns access rights: Once a device has requested to join the network and is profiled, the NAC solution evaluates its credentials and validates its posture against a list of policies or conditions to determine whether it can be allowed to access the network. Depending on the policies, the device will be granted or denied access to the network segments described by the policies.
3. Continuously monitors how the device behaves: If the solution detects that the device is behaving in unwanted ways, such as starting to scan ports or disabling the antivirus software, the NAC can terminate access to the network.

NAC is also part of a wider enterprise security ecosystem, which includes solutions such as:

• Mobile device management (MDM): Data such as the jailbreak status of a device can determine whether or not it can connect to a network
• Firewalls: These are used to accurately enforce policies based on user, group, and specific device attributes and leverage NAC to remediate a device exhibiting poor behavior.
• Security information and event management (SIEM) tools: These can be set up to store authentication data for all connected devices.
• Multifactor authentication (MFA): Users can be asked to use MFA to verify their identity when connecting to networks and resources.

This GigaOm Key Criteria report details the criteria and evaluation metrics for selecting an effective NAC solution. The companion GigaOm Radar report identifies vendors and products that excel in those criteria and metrics. Together, these reports provide an overview of the category and its underlying technology, identify leading NAC offerings, and help decision-makers evaluate these platforms so they can make a more informed investment decision.