NAC Snapshot: Endpoint Fingerprinting

Increasingly, organizations are concerned about the proliferation of unmanaged devices on their network. Driven by compliance requirements, Forrester clients often inquire about noncorporate assets — like contractor or partner laptops — that regularly connect to their networks. Moreover, they have a number of non-compute endpoints on the same networks — like IP phones and printers — that are difficult to track and classify. Security professionals often face audit failures due to such devices, which may allow a user to spoof resources, bypass controls, and get access to the network. Endpoint fingerprinting is a way around this problem. And when it's used in conjunction with network access control solutions, it provides an operationally efficient solution that can streamline many manual audit processes.