McAfee Announces Expanded, Enhanced NAC Suite

| Oct 22, 2008 | Enterprise Security | Competitive Intelligence Report

| Analyst: Andrew Braunberg

Current Perspective: Positive
Vendor Importance: Moderate
Market Impact: Moderate

Event Summary

October 20, 2008 – McAfee has announced a Unified Secure Access approach that links endpoint and network security with access control and compliance and is centrally managed by McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) software which helps organizations ease the deployment and management of NAC. This third generation NAC offering is a key component of McAfee’s endpoint and network security strategy, demonstrating McAfee’s ability to deliver comprehensive enterprise solutions unmatched in the industry.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Positive on McAfee’s announced expansion and enhancements to its Network Access Control solution. McAfee has introduced network-based components to McAfee NAC that significantly improve the company’s ability to control the behavior of unmanaged devices on corporate networks. Guest access control is an important use case, particularly among early adopters.

• Vendor Importance: Moderate to McAfee, because NAC is being positioned as an important component of McAfee’s overall security portfolio as well as its broader compliance and risk management portfolio. NAC is now an integrated component of McAfee ToPS for Endpoint Advanced and has been integrated with McAfee’s network IPS product, Network Security Platform (formerly called IntruShield IPS).

• Market Impact: Moderate on the NAC market, because McAfee is a leading player in the space and this announcement strengthens its offering in important ways. It also helps the company frame its NAC solution within its broader compliance and risk management strategy and portfolio. This is an important consideration as stand-alone NAC products begin to lose ground to solutions that are components of broader solutions or infrastructure.

Recommended Competitor Actions

• NAC vendors should take this announcement seriously because it provides McAfee with a much stronger story for addressing unmanaged users on corporate networks. Competitors should attempt to counter McAfee expanded footprint by downplaying the utility of the solution outside of McAfee shops.

• Competitors should raise FUD regarding the new McAfee NAC Appliance by describing it as a first generation offering that is unproven in production environments. Competitors should note that the product is not yet generally available and that pricing and performance information have not been made public on the product.

• McAfee likes to say it tends to address endpoint security first because doing it well is hard. It then moves to network-based approaches. It made this claim with regard to DLP and then had to abandon its DLP Gateway and buy a competitor to obtain technology to fill the breach. Competitors should remind prospects of this history and suggest that technology investments in McAfee’s network-based NAC components maybe not be safe.

• Pure-play NAC vendors need to concede that consolidation in the market will continue and that it will become increasingly difficult to compete with vendors that bake NAC into their larger infrastructure portfolio (e.g., Cisco, Microsoft and Juniper) or that position NAC as a component of broader security, systems management, compliance offerings (e.g., McAfee, Symantec).

Recommended End User / Customer Actions

• Existing McAfee NAC customers should be pleased with this announcement. The 3.0 release delivers important new functionality to the product and will provide more flexibility in deployment and enforcement options. The new release also better addresses important NAC use cases.

• McAfee shops that have been on the fence regarding adoption of NAC should take a fresh look at McAfee’s NAC products. In particular, McAfee can now support much more targeted roll outs of NAC functionality, particularly guest access scenarios.

• Prospects should have McAfee on their short lists of potential NAC vendors. McAfee continues to show a strong commitment to the technology as demonstrated by significant product development, acquisition and partnership.

CLIENTS ONLY

Current Perspective

Competitive Positives and Concerns

Recommended Vendor Actions

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