Look To Network Access Control (NAC) To Streamline IT Compliance

Did your organization just fail an audit test, and were you, the IT manager, blamed for not keeping your infrastructure or IT operations up to snuff? The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), are causing organizations to spend large sums of money and energy to keep infrastructure requirements compliant with an ever-changing set of regulations. To ease this operational burden and to satisfy multiple requirements, you have to find a common framework around basic network and security requirements such as network segmentation, auditing, monitoring, access, and authentication. As an IT infrastructure and operations (I&O) manager, you're not responsible for all aspects of compliance, but your chief information security officer (CISO) or chief risk officer (CRO) will expect you to focus on simplifying operations by automating controls and efficiently producing audit reports. In particular, you should investigate network access control (NAC) technology, which is squarely aimed at both requirements. But be careful to review your NAC solution for sufficient granularity in its auditing, reporting, and monitoring capabilities.