Cisco Network Admission Control

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What Does Cisco Network Admission Control Mean?

Cisco Network Admission Control (NAC) is a set of technologies and solutions that uses the infrastructure of a computer network for network access control (NAC) and network protection. Network access is allowed only by trusted endpoint devices, such as workstations, servers, personal digital assistants (PDA) and other devices. It restricts all noncompliant devices. All access methods are monitored, including wireless devices, local area networks (LAN) and remote access wide area networks (WAN).

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Techopedia Explains Cisco Network Admission Control

In 2006, Cisco and Microsoft announced an interoperability agreement that enabled collaboration between Cisco NAC and Microsoft Network Access Protection (Microsoft NAP), followed by co-marketing during the next year. Customers were allowed to use one or both technologies.

NAC also blocks, isolates and repairs noncompliant machines while suspect machines are quarantined in a designated area. Queued network guests are granted a quarantine area to work out authentication or other issues. Often, some type of credential is required prior to granting network access.

Additionally, a machine’s anti-virus status may be verified, which includes current versions of anti-virus software, virus definitions and scan engines.

The Cisco Trust Agent is a key NAC component that resides on an endpoint system. As it collects security state information, the Cisco Trust Agent communicates with Cisco routers. This information is communicated to the Cisco Secure Access Control Server (Cisco ACS) for access determination. The decision is then communicated to the router, which enforces the decision by allowing or disallowing access.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist
Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.