Where is the intersection between the current BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend and the NAC trend of a few years ago?
According to Juniper Networks, their new policy approach helps enterprises evolve NAC, (known in Juniper’s parlance as unified access control or UAC) to embrace the BYOD phenomenon.
“We’ve now completed the integration, from a policy perspective, between the Junos Pulse unified access control system and our wireless LAN Controllers, EX switches and SRX gateways, ” Alex Gray, senior vice president and general manager, Campus and Branch Business Unit at Juniper told Enterprise Networking Planet. “So now we have ability to centrally define policy with a very rich set of policy verbs.”
Those policy “verbs” can provide context into what device an end user has, what applications they are using and where they are located. The effort is an extension of the Simply Connected portfolio of switches that Juniper launched in September of 2011. The initial launch did not include support for the SRX security gateway, which is now being added as a key enforcement point.
“Five or six years ago we were mostly dealing with Windows machines and things that weren’t mobile,” Grey said. “Now we’re dealing with multiple operating systems and mobility.”
Traditional and guest access are items that UAC and NAC solutions have been delivering for years. In Hardof’s view, UAC is an umbrella that could cover both corporate owned or employee owned devices in theory. There is however another key difference however between the NAC solutions that first showed up five years ago and the modern BYOD trend.
“You could argue that BYOD is UAC on steroids,” Grey said.
Read the full story at EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet:
Juniper Expands BYOD with New Hardware
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.