A new white paper from Juniper Networks, Tackling the Top Five Network Access Control Challenges, describes in detail the benefits of the company's Unified Access Control (UAC) platform and eX Series Ethernet switches.
The paper's premise is as follows: Numerous factors are driving enterprises to control who’s admitted to the corporate network and what resources (i.e. servers, applications, stored data) they’re allowed to access. Business trends such as mobility, outsourcing and the blurring of corporate network boundaries mean enterprises must provide network and application access to company “insiders”, such as employees, as well as “outsiders” that include guest users, partners and contractors.
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Further, IT must open the network to a dynamic workforce, while at the same time protecting critical assets from the vulnerabilities that openness and user mobility bring. In addition, to comply with industry and governmental regulations, enterprises must prove that they have stringent controls in place to restrict access to credit card information, patient health records and other sensitive data.
Operating end-to-end across the network, Juniper Networks says its Unified Access Control (UAC) platfrorm provides the visibility, protection and control that enterprises need to counter their most pressing security and access control issues. The UAC platform combines user identity, device security state and location information to create dynamic, session-specific network and application access controls.
As described by the white paper, the system ensures that only authenticated users and devices that initially comply, and maintain compliance, with network and security policies throughout a network session gain and retain access to the network and its resources, applications and sensitive data.