Cisco & Microsoft team for network security

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 07 September 2006 02:44

Business IT - Technology

Cisco Systems and Microsoft have demonstrated a new interoperable architecture at the Security Standard conference in Boston, claiming it delivers on a previous commitment to provide customers and partners with clear guidance on how Cisco Network Admission Control (NAC) and Microsoft Network Access Protection (NAP) will interoperate. of the Microsoft NAP and Cisco NAC ecosystems will be able to refer to the joint architecture for building or marketing solutions that work within the joint framework.

According to Charlie Giancarlo, chief development officer for Cisco, "This collaborative innovation represents a significant step in delivering self-defending networks that protect IT resources across enterprise organisations of all sizes. Interoperability provides the flexibility customers need to deploy a comprehensive solution that fits their business needs and hardens their IT infrastructure against security threats - threats that today are more complex and require greater coordinated protection throughout the network."

A technical white paper released by the two companies "describes the architecture and provides details on how to integrate the embedded security capabilities of Cisco's network infrastructure with those of Microsoft Windows Vista and the future version of Windows Server, code-named Longhorn."

Cisco and Microsoft have also revealed a general road map for bringing Cisco NAC and Microsoft NAP interoperability to market, including a limited beta program set to start later this calendar year.

They promise that customers will be able to start deploying the Cisco NAC-Microsoft NAP interoperable solution once Windows Server Longhorn is available in the second half of 2007. Cisco and Microsoft have cross-licensed the Cisco NAC and Microsoft NAP protocols "to help ensure interoperability and to enable both companies to respond to future market and customer requirements."

To simplify the development of third-party health agent and health enforcement components for clients running Windows Vista, the NAP client APIs will serve as the single programmatic interface used for health reporting for both Cisco NAC and Microsoft NAP.