Pulse Secure, the renowned provider of software-defined secure success solutions, has been recognised as a technology provider and among the top three performers for technical excellence in 2020 Network Access Control (NAC) market report by Quadrant Knowledge Solutions.
The “SPARKS Matrix: Network Access Control (NAC), 2020” report, by research firm Quadrant Knowledge Solutions, determined that the NAC market is expected to grow by 17.2% CAGR from a market size of $1.580 billion in 2019 to $4.07 billion by 2025.
Adaptive access control
Pulse Secure is well-positioned to deliver integrated secure access capabilities based on a Zero-Trust Security model"
“We rated Pulse Secure in the top 3 NAC vendors that scored the highest overall ratings, and a frontrunner in accommodating on-going and emerging trends - it is highly flexible, competitive and scalable,” said Piyush Dewangan, Industry Research Manager at Quadrant Knowledge Solutions.
“With recent enhancements, Pulse Secure is well-positioned to deliver integrated secure access capabilities based on a Zero-Trust Security model for hybrid IT with granular classification, contextual visibility, and adaptive access control.”
Network connected devices
The Strategic Performance Assessment and Ranking (SPARKS) Matrix report cites Pulse Secure as offering a flexible and scalable enterprise-grade NAC solution to support the requirement of large enterprises with “an easy path to NAC with wizard-based configurations to start with rich endpoint discovery, profiling, inventory and guest management features, and then extend functionality for granular user and endpoint compliance enforcement, automated threat response, and scaled management.”
Among the capabilities highlighted in the report that earned Pulse Policy Secure (NAC) a technical leadership ranking, the most distinguished are:
- Comprehensive capabilities for 360-degree visibility into remote and network connected devices
- Automated or self-service provisioning of guest, BYOD, and IoT devices
- Endpoint compliance, and enables automated threat response and remediation with built-in UEBA capability
- 802.1X and non-802.1X implementations depending on the organisations desired security posture; embedded, enterprise-class RADIUS server for layer-2 authentication and enforcement
- Agent and agentless options for pre- and post-admission control with host checker functionality that verifies an endpoint's security posture
- Works with an organisation's existing wired and wireless infrastructure, NGFW, SIEM, MDM and vulnerability solutions
- Centrally administered through Pulse One to manage over one million connected devices - each physical or virtual appliance can support up to 50,000 devices and is available for AWS and Azure
Access control policy
Pulse Policy Secure, as part of the Pulse Access Suite, offers enterprises operational advantages from common unified Client, policy engine and system management which results in more rapid deployment, integrated visibility and consistent access control policy for data centre and cloud.
“With the widespread move towards Zero Trust, we have seen an increase in the adoption of our enterprise NAC solution by organisations seeking an easier, extensible and more cost-effective alternative to other leading NAC products,” said Ganesh Nakhawa, Director of Portfolio Solutions at Pulse Secure.
Access compliance requirements
NAC is accepted as a key technology to improve an organisation's overall security defenses
“Our simple, modular and scalable approach to secure access allows enterprises to deliver user and device accessibility while ensuring end-to-end visibility and access compliance requirements. We are honoured to receive this NAC market distinction as a technology leader, and invite customers and resellers to take our solution for a test drive.”
According to the report, NAC is an approach in network security to manage and control access of endpoint devices and users to corporate networks based on an organisation's security policies. Organisations access policies can be based on endpoint configuration, authentication, and/or user's identity. NAC is increasingly becoming mature and accepted as a key technology to improve an organisation's overall security defences.
Compliance to global regulations
Both large and mid-sized organisations are looking at full-scale deployments and extending NAC security to a greater number of devices and endpoints. Traditionally, the adoption of security technologies is primarily driven by compliance to broader global regulations. In the global market, banking and financial services, education, government and healthcare sectors are the primary users of NAC solutions.
However, organisations from several industry verticals are increasingly focusing on improving their security measures to enhance overall security. IT/OT convergence has resulted in increased exposure to cyberthreats to the industrial environment, and NAC vendors are expanding their capabilities to support IT/OT convergence.
