Network Access Control For Dummies®

1.4. Leveraging What You Have Today

If you can leverage pieces and components of your existing network to deliver NAC, you can save time and expense when deploying a NAC solution.

Ensure that the NAC solution you review or select can leverage your existing network, policy, and reporting capabilities and resources as much as possible; work across standards and different platforms; and save yourself some headaches and a lot of wasted time and cost. The rest of this book shows you how.

You can use your existing network infrastructure, endpoint security software, security products, and other network hardware or software for NAC by considering any of the points in the following sections.

1.4.1. Standards

If you want to use the network that you have today to address NAC, you first need to determine whether the NAC solution that you're considering incorporates or uses industry standards; for example, the IEEE 802.1X standard for port-based network access control, which we cover in greater detail in Chapter 13. If the NAC solution that you're considering or reviewing utilizes the 802.1X standard and can work with an existing 802.lX network by leveraging 802.1X-compliant switches and wireless access points already in the network as NAC enforcement points, you've just leveraged a very vital — and expensive — portion of your existing network infrastructure. The more components that you ...