Microsoft Touts Growing NAC Interoperability

Microsoft pushed its Network Access Protection (NAP) strategy forward at the RSA show in San Francisco this week, hosting interoperability demonstrations with an array of security-platform and switch vendors.

Among the vendors demonstrating or announcing interoperability with Microsoft NAP were Alaxala Networks, Applied Identity, Avenda Systems, Bradford Networks, ConSentry Networks, Enterasys Networks, Foundry Networks, Extreme Networks, Lockdown Networks, Nevis Networks, SignaCert and Vernier Networks.

Activities on show floor included a demo network with 802.1x switches from eight different vendors controlled by the Longhorn Server Network Policy Server (NPS) using NAP. The demo involved quarantining a client and moving it to a separate VLAN segment for remediation and repair. Read more about this on the Microsoft NAP blog.

The RSA display follows an announcement last week that more than 100 networking and security partners have pledged to support Microsoft NAP. In September, Microsoft announced a joint architecture with Cisco enabling interoperability between NAP and Cisco's Network Admission Control platform. The two vendors are seen as rivals in the NAC (network access control) arena but pledges of interoperability may smooth out IT concerns that their approaches to NAC won't work together.Microsoft detailed its NAP approach at Network Computing's recent NAC Forum 2007.

Microsoft's NAP technology is publicly available with trial versions of Windows Vista and available as part of Beta 2 of Windows Server Longhorn.

Meanwhile, check out the NWC Blog as Mike Fratto clears up some seeming misconceptions about Cisco "open-sourcing" its NAC client.

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