I had to comment on an article in GCN by William Jackson on network access control. William I am sure with the best of intentions set out to do an article on different types of NAC that are available in the network and its continued adoption rates. However he made the mistake of positioning his article on the federal governments NAC adoption evolution based upon just speaking to Greg Stock over at Mirage Networks and some of the folks at Enterasys. Neither company has any real NAC presence in the federal government. So of course the perspective would be that the federal government has not been an early adopter of NAC. You know what they say, when you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The fact that Stock even brings up a NAC managed service as a potential option for the federal space screams that we are talking about someone who knows nothing about the Federal space.

So let me add a voice of experience and and some truth here. The federal government has not only been an early adopter of NAC, but it has been a leader in driving NAC standards and functionality. Go talk to the DoD and the armed forces about what they have been doing around NAC. Go talk to DISA about NAC deployments. Speak to Homeland Security, FCC, Transportation, USDA or any number of other federal agencies who have been looking at and using NAC for years already and than try to tell me that the Feds are lagging on NAC adoption. Go ask Cisco how much NAC they have sold into the federal space.

I wish Mr Jackson would do a little more digging besides talking to vendors with little or no presence in the federal market and in some cases even less experience in it. GCN readers deserve better!