Network Access Control For Dummies®

13.1. Making the Case

A standards-based NAC solution, whether industry-based or based on proprietary standards, can help to simultaneously integrate existing or new technologies and products, leveraging them to control device security and network access, as well as those organizational groups and disciplines that manage and deploy those technologies and products.

• A standard can emphasize or ensure interoperability between existing or new network components.

• When you use an interoperable standard with other technologies and products, it can help to assure that any new technology or product selection that your organization makes works seamlessly with the standard and existing deployed products.

You and your organization need to determine what value a given technology or product, whether it uses industry or proprietary standards, offers to your business. The following sections give you the considerations that you must make to determine whether to use a standards-based solution.

13.1.1. Costs

Standards enable technologies to be open and accessible, and they can provide you the ability to choose from several different vendors. So, a NAC solution based on open industry standards, as discussed in this book, can decrease total cost of ownership, while at the same time enabling you to choose the product or technology that you want to use and integrate.

13.1.2. Integration

NAC solutions integrate user-, device-, and network-related security and access control technologies. These technologies ...