Network Access Control For Dummies®

3.6. We're Watching You

After you allow users and machines onto the network, you need to ensure that they remain in compliance with the policies that they passed in order to get on the network.

Implementing a security solution such as network access control has no point if you check for policy compliance only at the very beginning of the session. That's like the highway patrol checking for speeders at the beginning of the freeway, and then assuming that everyone stays under the speed limit for the rest of the freeway.

The final phase — monitoring — comes into play when you want to make sure that everyone stays compliant.

When NAC monitors your network, it continually watches users and endpoints for updates or changes in their compliance status, as shown in Figure 3-6.

• If a user switches off his or her personal firewall or antivirus application, your NAC system should be able to detect that change and react accordingly.

• Perhaps your operating-system vendor just rolled out a very high severity patch that corrects a gaping security hole. Your NAC system should allow you to roll out a policy that scans for that patch after IT pushes it to all the managed systems so that you can ensure everyone has accepted and installed the patch.

  Figure 3.6. Monitoring your NAC solution.

  

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