Access control is of vital importance to organizations and business houses to protect sensitive and confidential data, given the alarming rise in hacking the world over.

This is more applicable to the concept of network access control without which it would be impossible for organizations to restrict outsiders from accessing resources on their individual networks.

Why is access control important?

Even though network access control (NAC) has been used conventionally by financial institutions and companies with the highest security needs, the usage of NAC systems is growing by leaps and bounds.

This is mostly due to the popularity of the IoT, “bring-your-own-device” policies, the integration of mobile device management with NAC technology, state-of-the-art firewalls, SIEM, and other assorted products for threat detection.

As an organization grows, so do its employee population, visitors, third-party suppliers, and contractors. This may lead to a situation where the risk of a breach also increases and there may be ample reason to mitigate that risk as also the potential damage it might eventually cause.

Advantages of access control

Delivers access that’s role-based: Even though NAC is essentially a security technology that denies or allows access to a particular network, it has also the ability to deliver granular-based network access.

This provides network access to particular areas of the network only after integration with Active Directory controls and allows the owner of a particular device only to perform his job role. This special ability sure comes in handy when excessive network permissions crop us and managing this centrally through the NAC system can allows greater flexibility and control to access shared folders.

IoT & BYOD: IoT and BYOD are largely responsible for increasing the demand for NAC because handling multiple mobile devices is a major issue in secured network access that causes minimal disruption to its  end users.

With more personal devices entering the fray along with corporate-owned devices, complications regarding network and endpoint security are arising for organizations that have to support not only their employees who connect their devices to the corporate network, but also devices used by third parties like partners, contractors, and visitors.

With IoT being added to the workplace, NAC vendors have to now ensure that their agentless detection can categorize and assess these devices successfully. NAC products provide access to information that’s personally identifiable directly or allow access to data to further enumerate network resources.

Reduces APT risk: Eve though NACs are unable to detect and thwart APTs directly, they are capable of stopping the threat source from connecting with the network. Moreover, they can also integrate with certain products for APT detection, and isolate affected systems automatically before an attacker can access the network further.