Network Access Control For Dummies®

Introduction

Welcome to Network Access Control For Dummies. It's a scary networking world out there, and this book provides you with a working reference for understanding and deploying what type of network access control (NAC) is best suited for your network and you.

Because you're holding this book, you already know that security issues exist out there — and you've probably, maybe frantically, attempted to protect the network you're responsible for from the scenarios that get printed on the front page.

See whether you can identify with any of the follow scenarios:

• Authentication nightmare: You just put in a system to authenticate users who log on to your network, and everyone is hissing at you like snakes. They hate it. They hate you. They claim productivity is down, and the VPs are writing vicious e-mails to your boss.

• VPN for more than VPs: Everybody wants to work from home once or twice a week, and you have more and more remote employees working from their home offices around the world. Guess what? You're having a really hard time figuring out who's who and what they should have access to. Complaints about missing files and mission-critical info that's available to all have replaced your bagel with your morning coffee.

• Portable hi-jinks: You have absolutely no control over what devices people use to log on to your network, and after they log on, you have no control over what storage devices they can use as peripherals, or what they can take away. HR is investigating people who ...