Cisco Teams With Security Vendors To Thwart Worms, Viruses

Under the Cisco Network Admission Control program, Cisco is joining forces with Network Associates, Symantec and Trend Micro to integrate technology in an effort to contain security threats before they cause damage, said John Chambers, president and CEO of Cisco, San Jose, Calif., in a statement.

"As the network continues to be a mission-critical business system for organizations of all sizes, a top priority for customers is securing their information assets and minimizing the impact of viruses and worms," Chambers said.

Cisco's new Network Admission Control functionality gives customers the ability to restrict network access from devices such as PCs, servers and PDAs that are not compliant with their established security policies in areas such as operating system patch level or antivirus state.

The functionality will be built into Cisco's access and midrange routers in mid-2004, which will enable the routers to block, quarantine or give restricted access to noncompliant devices when they attempt to connect to the network.

Cisco Network Admission Control systems will initially support end points running Microsoft Windows NT, XP or 2000.

Cisco has teamed with its security vendor partners to develop the Cisco Trust Agent, a piece of software that resides on an end point to collect information from antivirus programs and communicate the data back to the network.

The networking vendor has licensed Trust Agent to Network Associates, Symantec and Trend Micro so it can be integrated with their security software client products, the company said.

Trust Agent also will be integrated with the Cisco Security Agent, the vendor's host intrusion prevention and distributed firewall software.

The new program is part of Cisco's Self-Defending Network Initiative, the company's security strategy aimed at developing networks that can identify, prevent and adapt to security threats.

In the future, Cisco plans to extend Network Admission Control functionality to other product lines, including its switches, wireless access points and security appliances and to add other partners to the program.