Cisco ties up with Trend Micro, Symantec, Network Associates

Our Convergence Bureau
22 November 2003

Mumbai: Cisco Systems has announced the release of the Cisco Network Admission Control programme to address the increased threat and impact of worms and viruses to networked businesses. This strategic program represents a significant step forward in industry collaboration and is part of Cisco's Self-Defending Network Initiative that helps customers identify, prevent and adapt to security threats.

"As the network continues to be a mission critical business system for organisations of all sizes, a top priority for customers is securing their information assets and minimising the impact of viruses and worms," says John Chambers, president and CEO, Cisco Systems. "Cisco's Network Admission Control programme is designed to address a pervasive customer concern by helping organisations contain security threats before they cause damage."

The Cisco Network Admission Control programme was developed in conjunction with leading anti-virus software vendors including Network Associates, Symantec, and Trend Micro. This collaboration addresses the broad and growing concern among enterprise customers — the re-mediation costs resulting from worms and viruses.

"Recent worm and virus infections have elevated the issue of keeping insecure nodes from infecting the network and have made this a top priority for enterprises today," says Mark Bouchard, senior programme director, META Group. "Many organisations were successful at stopping recent worm attacks at their Internet boundaries, yet still fell victim when mobile or guest users connected their infected PCs directly to internal local area networks. Eliminating this type of threat will require a combination of strengthened policies and network admission control systems."

Customers using network admission control systems can allow network access only to compliant and trusted endpoint devices (for example, PCs, servers, personal digital assistants) and can restrict the access of non-compliant devices. In its initial phase, the Cisco Network Admission Control functionality enables Cisco routers to enforce access privileges when an endpoint attempts to connect to a network.

This decision can be based on information about the endpoint device such as its current anti-virus state and operating system patch level. Network admission control systems allow non-compliant devices to be denied access, placed in a quarantined area, or given restricted access to computing resources. Cisco Network Admission Control systems will initially support endpoints running Microsoft Windows NT, XP and 2000 operating systems.