Why today’s boundless company networks are like castles without walls being protected by network security systems stuck in the middle ages.

Today, your network is likely comprised of your LAN, MPLS, SD-WAN, employees’ homes, Azure, Starbucks, Marriott, any airport…you get the idea. Your network extends to wherever authorized devices connect to gain access to company resources.

All of this proprietary, confidential or merely sensitive data being accessed across these parts of the network is no longer safe behind your castle walls. Access to everything (from everywhere) has changed the security dynamic.

How does zero trust factor in?

Enter zero trust, a new – well, maybe not that new – but let’s say in vogue network security model that is focused to address the challenges posed by today’s increasingly complex and extended corporate networks.

The zero trust model does not require or expect you to have walls around your networks. With zero trust, as the name implies, NOTHING inside or outside a company is trusted. That means no devices or systems used by employees is automatically trusted.

Traditional NAC meet zero trust requirements

Now, this security model may seem familiar. Isn’t this just like network access control (NAC)? Well, yes and no. NAC has been around since the early 2000s, and has been primarily focused on ensuring only valid and authorized devices can access your network. Traditionally, however, NAC solutions have only focused on the LAN, as that was what existed within the castle walls of an organization. But as I’ve stressed, the typical network extends far beyond the LAN today.

To truly achieve zero trust, organizations need a NAC solution that can easily and effectively work when your castle has no walls.

NAC for today’s sprawling networks

Since your employees are likely on the move and using several different devices (desktop, laptop, phone, etc.), any NAC would need to have device awareness no matter where the device is geo-locationally. And that means not only when it is joining the LAN, but also when it is connecting from home, from a remote office, from Starbucks – awareness anywhere and everywhere, always.

Perhaps the most critical factor when assessing your network security needs is having the ability to continuously monitor endpoint risk. After all, you can’t just go around authorizing every company PC to connect if it’s not “trusted.”

Ensuring endpoints are in a company compliant state, minimizing or eliminating the potential for endpoints to be hacked and used to bridge your network is crucial. This requires a NAC that is always aware of endpoint risk and can use that to allow or block access. Today, this mixture give your network the best chance of minimizing such threats.

It’s the control part of NAC that ultimately brings the most added value versus endpoint-only zero trust solutions. The ability to not only allow access to your trusted devices, but also to control that access by placing them on the proper VLAN or under an appropriate access control list (ACL) adds a powerful layer of security.

The answer is in the cloud

Lastly, a NAC for today’s boundless network must be “light weight.” You don’t want to be deploying appliances or software in every remote location, store or office. It takes an immense amount of bandwidth and expertise to properly execute. Can’t that investment be better spent elsewhere?

This is where traditional NAC solutions fall short. Since they were designed for the old castle network model, they simply aren’t equipped to give you the full visibility and control you need over your extended network to prevent breaches.

The answer is NAC delivered as a cloud service. Manageable from anywhere, coverage for everywhere, and with continuous device awareness – a cloud-delivered NAC adhering to the zero trust model can future-proof your increasingly extended network.

Portnox demonstrates best-in-class capability and market leadership through demonstrated technology success and customer commitment.

NEW YORK, NY – November 4, 2020 – Portnox, a fully cloud-delivered network access control (NAC) provider, today announced it has attained a Gold Cloud Platform competency, demonstrating a “best-in-class” ability and commitment to meet Microsoft Corp. customers’ evolving needs in today’s mobile-first, cloud-first world and distinguishing itself within Microsoft’s partner ecosystem.

To earn a Microsoft Gold competency, partners must successfully complete exams (resulting in Microsoft Certified Professionals) to prove their level of technology expertise, and then designate these certified professionals uniquely to one Microsoft competency, ensuring a certain level of staffing capacity. They also must submit customer references that demonstrate successful projects, meet a performance (revenue and or consumption/usage) commitment (for most Gold competencies), and pass technology and/or sales assessments.

The cloud-delivered CLEAR NAC platform from Portnox is designed to help partners capitalize on the growing demand for infrastructure and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions built on Microsoft Azure. With built-in scalability, no on-site hardware, multitenancy and other benefits, the platform allows Microsoft partners to empower their customers by eliminating the traditional complexities associated with on-premises NAC.

“This Microsoft Gold Cloud Platform competency showcases our expertise in and commitment to today’s technology market and demonstrates our deep knowledge of Microsoft’s products and services,” said Ofer Amitai, CEO at Portnox “We plan to accelerate our customers’ success by serving as technology advisors for their business demands.”

“By achieving a Gold competency, partners have demonstrated the highest, most consistent capability and commitment to the latest Microsoft technology,” said Gavriella Schuster, corporate vice president, One Commercial Partner (OCP) at Microsoft Corp. “These partners have a deep expertise that puts them in the top of our partner ecosystem, and their proficiency will help customers drive innovative solutions.”

Cloud Platform

The Cloud Platform competency is designed for partners to capitalize on the growing demand for infrastructure and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions built on Microsoft Azure. Differentiate your company with the Cloud Platform competency, and you will be eligible for Signature Cloud Support, Azure deployment planning services, Azure sponsored credit, direct partner support, eligibility to deploy certain on-premises, internal use software on Microsoft Azure, and access to the cloud platform roadmap.

The Microsoft Partner Network helps partners strengthen their capabilities to showcase leadership in the marketplace on the latest technology, to better serve customers and to easily connect with one of the most active, diverse networks in the world.

The problem with most traditional on-premise network access control solutions is their complexity across many fronts, including initial setup, configuration, scalability, and on-going maintenance and upgrades. As a truly cloud-delivered NAC service, Portnox CLEAR delivers SIMPLICITY across all of these critical areas.

VALUE 1: Setup Simplicity

Unlike traditional on-premise solutions that require hardware appliances, software, and other on-premise elements, with Portnox CLEAR, you simply create your dedicated instance in Microsoft Azure using your company email or via SSO (such as Azure AD or GSuite) in a matter of just minutes!

With your dedicated instance of CLEAR created, you simply check the appropriate box(s) to create your RADIUS instance. Dedicated F5 load balancers are spun up as well as auto-scale, so you never have to be concerned with service performance or scalability – it will automatically expand as needed to meet demand.

Portnox CLEAR’s simplicity extends with out-of-box integration and one-click set-up for several common directory services, including:

• On-premise AD
• Azure AD
• G-Suite
• Okta Universal Directory

SIEM integration is as simple as providing the IP/port, protocol type (TCP, UDP, HTTPS), and data format (JSON/CEF).

VALUE 2: Configuration Simplicity

The complexity of traditional on-premise NAC does not stop at the initial set-up of the local appliance(s), load balancing, RADIUS, and other on-premise components. As shown in the sample policy screenshots below, the complexity of traditional NAC extends to policy configuration that is often layered with multiple and nested interdependencies.

From inception, the focus with CLEAR has been to simplify policy configuration, allowing CLEAR to be fully deployed and operational in a measure of hours/days vs. traditional NAC, which typically can take weeks, or in many cases, months to roll out. Intuitive, easy-to-configure access control, risk, and remediation policies are at the foundation of Portnox CLEAR as reflected in the sample screenshots below.

Risk Policies

Easily configure risk-based access controls for all devices or different groups of devices (i.e. accounting, engineering, etc.), by simply assigning a risk value to each group’s relevant compliance checks.

A simple slide bar easily turns risk values into action (allow, alert, block). It’s that SIMPLE! Unlike traditional NAC that monitors a device risk ONLY when it is on or connected to the network, Portnox CLEAR will monitor risk all the time regardless of if the device is on or off-network.

Remediation Policies

While it is important to continuously be aware of the current risk posture of a device and to be able to use that awareness as part of access control. The ability to proactively take action on the endpoint to help assure a minimum level of compliance is always maintained can be equally important. As with all other policy configurations, setting group-specific remediation policies in CLEAR is as simple as a few clicks.

Unlike traditional NAC that will take remediation actions ONLY if the device is on the network, Portnox CLEAR proactively enforces remediation actions all the time regardless if the device is on or off-network.

VALUE 3: On-Demand Auto-Scale

Delivered as a cloud service, Portnox CLEAR eliminates the need for the capacity planning of on-premise software or appliances. Eliminates the need to expand capacity or upgrade appliances to meet future growth needs. Portnox CLEAR services will automatically expand on-demand to meet any demand spikes and future growth.

Our Azure services are scaling up (and down) automatically based on usage and load. We can automatically control the VM size and the scale-up / down rules.

For the RADIUS component, we use Azure Kubernetes to manage the instances and allow scaling based on demand. We use F5 load balancer to channel the traffic to the right instances and make sure the scaling is transparent to the end-user.

VALUE 4: Ease of Integration

Portnox CLEAR continues to expand native integrations and simplified out-of-band integration through and included restAPI.

Current integrations include:

• Active Directory
• Azure AD
• GSuite
• MS Intune
• OKTA
• Palo Alto
• SIEM (any/all leading vendors)

Portnox CLEAR also integrates with all leading anti-virus providers to validate and remediate (update) as part of CLEAR compliance and remediation capabilities. Portnox CLEAR also includes a REST-full API over HTTPS that can be used in any programming language that supports REST calls or invoked directly through any HTTPS client such as cURL.

VALUE 5: Zero-Touch Maintenance

As a true SaaS solution, Portnox CLEAR is truly zero-touch!

• No on-going software updates/patching
• No management of scheduled downtime
• No hardware or software end-of-life issues

In this webinar, co-hosted by Portnox and CyberTEK, we examine how Portnox CLEAR – the first and only cloud-delivered NAC-as-a-Service – is helping organizations gain actionable network visibility and continuous risk monitoring of all endpoints across all access layers – no matter device type or geo-location.

As the NCUA audits continue to expand, many credit unions struggle with finding an effective solution to meet Domain 3 controls within the ACET framework.

In this webinar, co-hosted by Portnox and Btech, find out how Portnox CLEAR is providing the remote network access control, off-campus endpoint awareness, risk and real-time remediation capabilities that either directly meet or highly contribute to many of the most difficult Domain 3 audit areas and requirements.

As part of this webinar, you will also hear from Utah-based University Federal Credit Union – a Portnox customer utilizing Portnox CLEAR’s zero-trust remote access-as-a-service capabilities.

The webinar will take place on Wednesday, October 14 at 3PM EST.