Cisco NAC Appliance

Enforcing Host Security with Clean Access

Authenticate, inspect, remediate, and authorize end-point devices using Cisco NAC Appliance

Jamey Heary, CCIE No. 7680

Contributing authors: Jerry Lin, CCIE No. 6469,

Chad Sullivan, CCIE No. 6493, and Alok Agrawal

With today's security challenges and threats growing more sophisticated, perimeter defense alone is no longer sufficient. Few organizations are closed entities with well-defined security perimeters, which has led to the creation of perimeterless networks with ubiquitous access. Organizations need to have internal security systems that are more comprehensive, pervasive, and tightly integrated than in the past.

Cisco Network Admission Control (NAC) Appliance, formerly known as Cisco Clean Access, provides a powerful host security policy inspection, enforcement, and remediation solution that is designed to meet these new challenges. Cisco NAC Appliance allows you to enforce host security policies on all hosts (managed and unmanaged) as they enter the interior of the network, regardless of their access method, ownership, device type, application set, or operating system. Cisco NAC Appliance provides proactive protection at the network entry point.

Cisco NAC Appliance provides you with all the information needed to understand, design, configure, deploy, and troubleshoot the Cisco NAC Appliance solution. You will learn about all aspects of the NAC Appliance solution including configuration and best practices for design, implementation, troubleshooting, and creating a host security policy.

Jamey Heary, CCIE No. 7680, is a security consulting systems engineer at Cisco, where he works with its largest customers in the northwest United States. Jamey joined Cisco in 2000 and currently leads its Western Security Asset team and is a field advisor for its U.S. Security Virtual team. His areas of expertise include network and host security design and implementation, security regulatory compliance, and routing and switching. His other certifications include CISSP, CCSP, and Microsoft MCSE. He is also a Certified HIPAA Security Professional. He has been working in the IT field for 13 years and in IT security for 9 years.

• Understand why network attacks and intellectual property losses can originate from internal network hosts
• Examine different NAC Appliance design options
• Build host security policies and assign the appropriate network access privileges for various user roles
• Streamline the enforcement of existing security policies with the concrete measures NAC Appliance can provide
• Set up and configure the NAC Appliance solution
• Learn best practices for the deployment of NAC Appliance
• Monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot the Cisco NAC Appliance solution

This security book is part of the Cisco Press Networking Technology Series. Security titles from Cisco Press help networking professionals secure critical data and resources, prevent and mitigate network attacks, and build end-to-end self-defending networks.

Category: Cisco Press?Security

Covers: End-Point Security