Identity and trust are tricky issues when managing a network. For several years, Cisco has been working to develop technologies that will ensure that only healthy endpoints gain access to a network.
But on Tuesday, it went a step farther. Cisco is expanding its TrustSec product to improve network security, Enterprise Networking Planet reports.
How do you establish trust on a network?
Back in 2003, networking giant Cisco introduced the concept of NAC (Network Access Control) to help secure networks by ensuring that only healthy endpoints are granted admission. It expanded the idea in 2007 with the initial announcement of a new technology called TrustSec, which was supposed to provide additional identity and trust attributes on top of NAC. Yet after the initial TrustSec announcement, Cisco has remained largely quiet on the topic — until now.
Cisco today announced the expansion of TrustSec to help create identity secured networks. The TrustSec news is being accompanied with the expansion of Cisco’s AnyConnect VPN initiative, which also first debuted in 2007, to now bring secure networking VPN technology to mobile devices.
“What we’re announcing is that we are now shipping some of the Catalyst and Nexus switches with the capability for TrustSec,” Cisco Product Line Manager Horacio Zambrano told InternetNews.com. “It’s really about the ability to add encryption features to the infrastructure so you can have better security and have support for 802.1x
