The Challenge
As networks grow in power and importance, they become more exposed and introduce vulnerabilities to businesses that work around the clock from locations around the world. Employees, contractors, partners, resellers, suppliers, and customers access corporate networks from satellite offices, homes, hotels, and coffee shops. New devices and access channels, such as wireless networks, change the way people use and access corporate networks. They continually adopt an evolving set of tools and media including laptops, desktops, PDAs, and other mobile devices. These activities expose businesses to new threats, including viruses, worms, spyware, thieves, and non-compliant software that all seek to penetrate and contaminate the network.
Network and security teams struggle to enforce consistent policies and procedures designed to protect the dispersed network—and the business running across it. Adding to the complexity are regulations meant to protect data and reduce threats, such as Sarbanes Oxley, SAS 70, GLBA, HIPAA, FISMA, CALEA, the PCI Data Security Standard.
The Integrated Solution
Together, Foundry and Bradford Networks enable administrators to add role-based identity management, endpoint compliance, and usage policy enforcement to the Foundry infrastructure by leveraging the security capabilities inherent in Foundry switches.
How It Works
Foundry and Bradford Networks address the dynamic networking landscape with comprehensive infrastructure and NAC solutions that drive identity management, endpoint compliance, and policy enforcement throughout every network session. During the pre-connect process, Foundry switches communicate with Bradford devices. Bradford Networks NAC solutions grant entry to the network only after conducting a successful posture assessment with either a persistent or a dissolvable agent.
By leveraging the security features inherent in the Foundry IronShield Security infrastructure, the combined solution delivers even greater security and assurance without costly equipment upgrades and performance bottlenecks.
Bradford Networks’ innovative NAC Director product family delivers the three essential elements of effective network access control—identity management, endpoint compliance, and usage policy enforcement—in an integrated, appliance-based solution. NAC Director automatically identifies authorized users and registered devices and verifies device compliance before granting network access. If the user’s system is noncompliant, NAC Director provides self-remediation options so the user can update their system directly.
NAC Director then continuously enforces security policies, records detailed historical network activity, and generates reports for security threat analysis and regulatory compliance. It offers three important advantages:
- Enforces at the Edge: Bradford Networks edge enforcement provides the best security, the most flexible enforcement, and the least risk in deployment. Implementing edge enforcement is also highly scalable and cost-effective.
- Operates out of Band: Bradford Networks NAC solutions leverage the specific security features and properties of installed networking devices for enforcement and remediation, giving organizations the most value from all of their infrastructure investments.
- Unique Seven-Point Identity Profile: Bradford Networks solutions create an advanced seven-point identity profile that links the user name and role, the device name, its MAC address, IP address, physical network access point, and access time for each user. Administrators use this profile to locate, monitor, control, and resolve threats down to the exact point of access.
