NARRATOR: In terms of NAC evolution, let’s take a look at a generic NAC server and how it’s evolved over time. So what we can see that over time, existing NAC solutions or NAC servers, they started adding new features, new integrations, new components to it. And what we’re seeing is they grew over time.
So they started by having just AAA or authentication services with policy engines. Then they started adding user device databases, profilers, guest portals, posture check features, certificate services, IoT registration, et cetera, et cetera. All these things, they just started piling up on top of one single monolithic software architecture that traditionally lived on either a single hardware appliance or a VM, and then they had to be clustered.
So ask yourself two questions. What’s going to happen if one of those features or components has an issue or a failure? And what’s going to happen if we need to get an update for one of these functionalities? Say we want to get an update for our guest portal and get some new features. It’s not a pleasant experience.
How do we currently scale NAC in production???