When choosing among NAC solutions, the key is to consider your requirements from within the universe of possible policies, especially in terms of the granularity of both the policies and their enforcement. Policy is king As in my previous reviews of solutions from ConSentry, Enterasys, McAfee, Symantec, and Trend Micro, I looked at the Sophos product's ability to address a set of typical enterprise policies and distinguish the ways in which the product does that. Although Sophos offers anti-virus software for Mac OS X and Linux as well as Windows, this first release of Sophos NAC Advanced is focused strictly on assessment and policy management for Windows end points. Sophos NAC Advanced combines a Windows Server 2003-based policy management server with end-point agents, dissolvable agents, and reporting to deliver a compelling system for Windows-oriented environments. However, Sophos also took a decidedly open path to the system, allowing for integration with environments using a wide range of anti-virus agents, 802.1x, DHCP, Cisco NAC, and VPN methods of control and enforcement. In short, there are many ways to skin the NAC cat.Ĭonsidering Sophos' extensive background in managing the security of host systems, you might expect its NAC solution to make use of agent-based enforcement, and you'd be right. Network-based enforcement itself can take many forms, including dedicated gateway, DHCP manipulation, 802.1x authentication, and port- and VLAN-based enforcement on switches. Some vendors enforce policies using a client agent, some enforce them in the network, and some even use peers for enforcement. The wide variety of so-called NAC (network access control) products on the market shows a broad range of thinking about policy-based security controls and the management of the network in general, including the end-point devices that connect to the network.

Sophos for mac reviews