The highest-rated factor is easy integration with existing infrastructure: Of the 179 people in the deployer group who expressed a preference, all said integration is either "somewhat important" or "very important." Fault tolerance, high availability and low impact on LAN performance are also critical, rated as somewhat or very important by more than 90 percent of all respondents in both groups.
Support for non-Windows OSs remains the least important selling point for a NAC system. However, just 50 percent this year rated Apple Mac support as "not important," down from 75 percent last year. Attention to Linux is also growing, with about one-third rating support "very important." Both of these OSs can be problems for architectures that rely on client-side agents, as can non-PC-based network devices such as VoIP phones and network printers.
There is also an increased demand for particular enforcement methods, though no clear favorite has emerged. Candidates are 8012.1x, VPN encryption and out-of-band technologies such as spoofing and ARP poisoning.
Working With Frameworks
With so many different NAC products, customers are demanding standards for integration with other security applications. Our survey showed a sharp increase in the number of readers who said that a NAC solution must be based on a standard. Cisco's CNAC framework is still the favorite, but as "Trusted NAC Vendors", shows, the majority of respondents to our poll don't care which one wins, just so long as a standard does eventually emerge (see "Four for Fighting" ).
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With low earth orbit (LEO) satellites fast becoming the norm and 3GPP unifying telecom standards around the globe, the satellite IoT and machine-to-machine (M2M) sector ought to be looking at a bright horizon. But is this the case?
