It's All About Controlling Users

Fortunately or unfortunately, I have another job at ConSentry aside from blogging, so I don't get to do it as frequently as I'd like. But the discussion that started, for the umpteenth time, a few days back on where the value is in NAC is just too important to leave with mis-information. So I'm responding to Alan's (is that better, Alan? ;)) comments here in more detail.

Let's be clear about one thing first - yes, ConSentry is really strong in post-admission. No, that's not why I think post-admission is the key to doing access control right. Let's think about typical business problems today:

The offshore development office where you've got no oversight over your "employees"
The contractors who have to be on your LAN but should only go to certain servers
The medical devices, robots, printers, and VoIP phones that need protection but can't host an agent
The stored data with no app-level control, like the research docs the DuPont guy stole
The credit card data that you have to not only restrict access to but document that control

None of these is solved with pre-admission control - not one. It's all about limiting what people can do AFTER they're on the LAN.

Admission control has limited value. And in case I haven't been clear in my opinion here, let me just say that I think admission control has limited value. It's not worthless - it just doesn't buy you much. And I believe that for reasons well beyond the fact that I work at ConSentry.

To be clear, ConSentry "gets it" that you need pre-admission control as a piece of the overall security solution. We just don't think that delivering our own installed endpoint agent is what customers want. Let's look at the strategy:

For unmanaged machines, no installed agent - you don't own the device, you're not installing software on it. Enter the ConSentry dissolvable agent. And yes, Alan, we OEM it from Check Point. Looks at OS, looks at AV, checks for adware/malware/spyware, looks at Registry settings, etc. Way more than "do you have AV software installed?" which is where a lot of dissolvable agents stop.

For managed machines, you need a permanent agent. We're smoking something if we believe you'll buy one from ConSentry. If Cisco's not winning at that game, why the heck would we think we could? Enterprises don't want to install yet another agent just to do NAC. They'll wait for MS NAP or they'll get the latest Sygate/McAfee/Trend version - something that's ALREADY on their desktop will do it. The managed PC is the desktop team's problem, and they're going to use software that's already on the desktop for NAC. That's where I think Amrit and Stiennon are really coming from - why would you go through all that trouble and expense of installing new software on the PC just for NAC? The endpoint software guys know they need to get there - hence the Symantec acquisitions of Sygate and Altiris.

So ConSentry's strategy - go figure - is why fight the customer. We'll work with NAP and Sygate and McAfee and Trend and any of the endpoint guys our customers ask us to. We're already working with regional endpoint guys in Europe and Japan, too - we call this Universal Endpoint Interoperability. We excel at post-admission control, but we know you need endpoint checking too, so we'll leverage whatever you've already got on the desktop to do it. And we'll give you a dissolvable agent to check the desktops you don't own.

As for advocating for out of band vs. inline, it's like the old saying - if you can do, do. If you can't, teach. Now that's actually heretical in my book since both my parents were teachers, but seriously, if you have the horsepower to be inline, and you're focused on security, you sit inline - full stop. It's always more secure to be inline. Those who advocate out of band simply CAN'T sit inline.

Alan's right - it's all about identity-based control. But out-of-band approaches cannot provide identity-based control. Taking feeds from an IDS does not equate to identity-based control. VLANs and ACLs do not equate to identity-based control. What do you do for the simple case, say the CIO? She's an exec and she's in IT - she needs overlapping sets of permissions. Are you going to build a VLAN of one for her, and then for every other person with a unique set of access rights? It just doesn't work. Plus, all this VLAN and ACL stuff is happening at L3 and L4, and what you really need is L7 - really understanding the app involved and applying access rights with that parameter as well.

Identity-based control is knowing all sorts of info about the user - name, addresses, location, role, group memberships - and mapping that to all sorts of info about what's happening at that moment - what server are you going to, what app are you running, what time of day is it - and applying policy to control access based on that entire universe of info.

I was an analyst and journalist for nine years, and as Rothman says, the instinct for skepticism simply doesn't get out of your blood. I didn't check my brain at the door in favor of a fresh batch of Kool-Aid when I joined ConSentry. I believe what I believe about the need for post-admission control not because it's all I have to hawk but because customers constantly affirm they need it. I'm fortunate to get a fair bit of time with customers, and many of them were trying to do this stuff with ACLs and VLANs, and it just wasn't working.

I'll readily admit to the "selective reality" problem, where given what your product's good at, you end up in front of customers with problems you can solve instead of those who can't use your technology. But that said, all you need to do is read the news today about what's getting companies into trouble and it's crystal clear it's all about controlling users after they're on the LAN. I believe that through and through, regardless of what ConSentry makes.

--Michelle McLean

mmclean-at-consentry-dot-com

Comments

[Dana Hendrickson]

Hi Michelle,

This is a well-reasoned and well-written response to the question "is network admission control sufficient?" However, the twin messages (1) it has limited value yet (2) ConSentry is eagerly working with vendors who offer NAC clients is a bit confusing. Why do the latter if the former is true?

Since neither network admission control nor inline threat mitigation come close to offering 100% protection working alone, why doesn't ConsSentry take the position that a combination provides the most value AND that ConSentry has simply decided that its best strategy for managed devices is work other admission control clients/vendors? You almost say this, but don't. And that is a significant difference.

Is your CENTRAL concern really about whether the network-related implementation requirements for network admission control can appear - in SOME situations - to outweigh its value?