UNLIKE CORPORATIONS, HIGHER EDUCATION institutions face unique challenges with IT security. As students arrive each semester with their own computers, many times their security devices are off, their anti-virus software is gone or simply outdated, and odd configurations abound.
"The challenge has always been how to take student laptops and bring them to a certain minimum level of health," says Steve Hanna, distinguished engineer at Juniper Networks and co-chair of the Trusted Network Connect Work Group, part of the nonprofit industry standards organization Trusted Computing Group. "It's important to identify machines whose defenses aren't up to snuff and get them fixed so you can have a stable network." Not to mention, the open information-sharing environment of a university encourages all kinds of people outside the campus to access the network as well. The business driver for Network Access (or Admission) Control (NAC) focuses on protecting information resources on the network, which face growing security risks. It involves policies such as pre-admission endpoint security policy checks and post-admission controls over where users and devices can go on a network. NAC in the education world primarily focuses on dealing with student-owned assets and access control issues on an open network. Hanna says NAC relieves the "first-week phenomenon" when students move in by automating the health check and remediation process. The NAC approach aims to keep student laptops healthy and maintained throughout the year. For that reason, Hanna believes it's easy to justify the purchase of an NAC tool in a campus environment.
"The burden placed on the IT staff in the first week of school-it's just impossible to meet successfully," Hanna says. "You can't take thousands of students through a manual process checking their machines ... but yet you also can't feasibly deal with the situation when the network becomes unstable or too dangerous to use because infected machines are coming back on campus."
Hanna says the growing trend in the last few years toward using NAC on college and university campuses is partly related to the availability of more commercial products. Going back 10 years, NAC campus pioneers created their own tools. Today IT folks can purchase off-the-shelf products from vendors with support, which makes the deployment much easier from an administrative standpoint.
NAC Decision-Making Tips Vendor representatives were asked to offer advice on making an NAC purchase decision. Here's what they said.
Go for interoperability. The reality is, most higher education IT departments have limited funding. One significant factor in evaluating an NAC solution, say reps at ForeScout Technologies, is the amount of interoperability the system has with the existing infrastructure. A flexible NAC offering will allow the school to integrate the NAC functionality without any significant restructuring or infrastructure upgrades.
Don't expect immediate implementation. Reps of StillSecure caution network administrators and IT directors not to think they can just throw a switch and turn on NAC. This NAC vendor recommends a best-practices phased approach to implementing NAC, which starts with passive endpoint testing, then moves to endpoint remediation, evolves into manual quarantining of unhealthy endpoints, and then finally results in a full-blown roll- out of automated quarantining. This process will keep help desk calls and administrative headaches to a minimum.
Consider the user experience. Another consideration for higher education institutions is getting students to accept having any barrier on their connectivity to the network, say Nortel Networks representatives. This requires a solution that is as transparent as possible to end users, while still offering a good level of security and enforcement.
One emerging trend in NAC for colleges, Hanna says, is integrating other security functions with NAC, which after all is a combination of technologies mixed together to increase the level of control. It's not just a product to purchase. Rather than maintaining isolated silos for intrusion detection, firewalls, and such, the trend is integrating the security component by moving to open standards. Increased maturity and broader endpoint integration are two other trends affecting the future of NAC in education, Hanna says.
Three Approaches to NAC
Experts recommend that NAC deployment be used for the right reasons. Executives at Juniper Networks point out that institutional leaders must understand the problem and goals before deploying an access control solution. Is the goal to protect the network from malware, such as worms, viruses, Trojan horses, and spyware introduced by managed or unmanaged devices? To increase the flexibility of the network to safely allow access for a variety of user types? To restrict access to specific data and applications based on user roles? To gain visibility into network activity and correlate to specific users? All of these needs can require unique solutions and approaches to deploy NAC tools. Technology research and advisory firm Gartner defines three NAC common approaches as infrastructure-based, endpoint software-based, and network security appliance-based.
Infrastructure-Based NAC
Infrastructure-based NAC focuses on upgrading the network or operating system infrastructure to garner integrated NAC functionality. Microsoft and Cisco are big players in this approach. Homogeneous campus environments-those that support just one network vendor-are a good fit for this solution.
