Cisco ups network cover

Cisco has extended the tentacles of its Network Admission Control (NAC) framework, adding more hardware support and auditing capabilities to help protect businesses from threats such as spyware, viruses and worms.

NAC is Cisco’s attempt to create a consortium of interests to build what it calls “self-defending networks” that can automatically block and fix user devices before they gain access to the LAN.

The two-year-old framework has now added support for Cisco Catalyst switches and wireless systems. It has also been extended to products that do not support Cisco’s Trust Agent, the NAC resource used to collate information about the state of devices. Instead software from Symantec, Qualys and Altiris can be used to audit devices such as guest PCs, PDAs or peripheral devices.

“We want to make every element on a network identifiable and be able to adapt to threats,” said Jeff Platon, Cisco vice-president of security marketing at last week’s RSA Conference. “Reactive technologies are just not successful on their own against the threats that affect a business today. It’s not enough to block out devices that are not in compliance with your security strategy – you want to fix it too.”

IBM’s Stuart McIrvine added that today’s firms put less trust in networks and devices because the threats are “so vast and varied”.