NAC NEWS UPDATES

The following is a list of new things out there in the Cisco NAC World. The NAC Market is continuing to grow in 2009 and with the growth the products will continue to evolve, get better and have more options.

Security Options Abound: New NAC Release

My friends over at TechWiseTV are a huge multi-media machine, producing video, audio and podcasts. Well this PodCast is on NAC 4.5, Alok Agrawal of the NAC Business Unit and Myself dive into some of the cool features of 4.5. All of the podcasts can be subscribed to through iTunes.

To access the NAC podcast go to:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/ns340/ns339/ns638/ns719/html_TW/tw_episode_198.html

And to get more information on all the great stuff coming from Techwise TV visit:
http://www.mytechwisetv.com/
or
http://cisco.com/go/interact

NAC Layer 3 Out of Band Design Guide That Uses VRF-Lite for Traffic Isolation

Cisco wrote a new configuration guide on using VRF-Lite for traffic isolation. This is a great configuration option for NAC, but with that said never re-design your network just for NAC. VRFs can become very complex and introducing new technology into the network should be carefully planned. Using VRFs in a enterprise network does make sense, but the reasons for moving to the new network design should be a combination of the added features/benefits for Security(NAC, Guest Access, Wireless, etc.) and Network managebility, throughput, and scalability.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6128/products_configuration_example09186a0080a3a8a7.shtml

New NAC Profiler Release

Last month a new maintenance release of Cisco NAC Profiler came out. 2.1.8-38 brings a good list of BugFixes and minor enhancements.

One Minor Enhancement that made it was Endpoint and Directory Timeout Unified Into Endpoint Timeout, which gives us more control on how to age out endpoints out of the database.

Find all the Fixes and information in the Release Notes.

The Release Notes can be found:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/nac/profiler/release_notes/218/218rn.html#wp101317

The new software can be download at:
http://www.cisco.com/cgi-bin/tablebuild.pl/nacprofiler-2.1.8 (Requires Valid Smartnet Contract)

NAC Support Logs in 4.5

Many people might be wondering what happen to the handy dandy support logs that used to be located in the "/perfigo/logs/" directory in previous NAC versions. Well in version 4.5 there were some enhancements to the logging and with those enhancements came new placement of the logs.

These logs are most commonly used to troubleshoot NAC during deployments. Please do not turn on advanced logging without reading the documentation fully or with the assistance of Cisco TAC.

The CAM log can be found at:

/perfigo/control/tomcat/logs/nac_manager.log

The CAS log can be found at:

/perfigo/access/tomcat/logs/nac_server.log

For those of you not familiar with what the logs contain, please feel free to reference the CAM and CAS Configuration Guides:

CAM Admin Guide - Support Logs
CAS Admin Guide - Support Logs

Cisco NAC Appliance 4.5 Released

The time has come.... 4.5 is here

It can be downloaded here! (Require Valid Smartnet Contract)

As with all NAC releases, be sure to read the RELEASE NOTES before upgrading!

CAM/CAS Configuration Guides:

• Cisco NAC Appliance - Clean Access Manager Installation and Configuration Guide, Release 4.5 New!
  
• Cisco NAC Appliance - Clean Access Server Installation and Configuration Guide, Release 4.5 New!

Bottom line is that 4.5 brings way too many features to list. That is why the release notes will help!

Looks for future posts on new features and benefits!

Configuration Example - Wireless Out Of Band - New NAC 4.5 Feature

The following is a configuration guide that was posted to explain how to configure NAC 4.5 with Wireless LAN Controller 5.1 for NAC Wireless OOB support.

NAC Out-Of-Band (OOB) Wireless Configuration Example

Wireless OOB is a feature we all have been waiting for. Some of the great benefits that I see are:

- No need for a second Clean Access Server(CAS) just for wireless. If you are a smaller organization wireless and wired can be performed on a single CAS.
- Bandwidth benefits for larger wireless infrastructures. With 10Gbps network backbones and large central wireless deployments(lots of clients), having a OOB wireless deployment is a no brainer.

This is one of a few great features coming out with NAC release 4.5.

NAC Updates

Windows Clean Access Agent Version 4.1.7 Released - Sept 30th

In this release their are a few minor resolved caveats:

- Symantec AntiVirus 10.x not fully compatible with CCA Agent
- Vista Agent does not detect MAC Address of Wireless NIC
- AVG Anti-Virus Free 8.x support for Virus Definition check

As with all upgrades, it is highly recommended to read the release notes before upgrading. Also, on a side note, remember that upgrades should be done for a purpose, either to fix a caveat or to gain new features.

Download 4.1.7 Windows Agent

Release Notes


3 NEW Configuration Examples posted to CCO

- NAC Appliance (CCA): Configure High Availability (HA) for the Clean Access Manager (CAM)
29/Sep/2008

- Deploy NAC Profiler in an Existing Out-of-Band NAC
02/Sep/2008

- Importing SSL Certificates to NAC Profiler
02/Sep/2008


To see all the previous Configuration Examples and TechNotes


How to Block Operating Systems with CCA

A friend of mine, Rob Chee, writes a blog on network security and had a great post on how to block operating systems using User Pages with CCA.

Make sure you check out his Post.

New Configuration Example: Configure Guest Access

Cisco posted a new Configuration Guide:

NAC: Configure Guest Access
This example will walk you through how to configure the various types of guest access on the Cisco Clean Access or NAC appliance.


To see all the previous Configuration Examples and TechNotes

New Configuration Examples

Cisco posted two new Configuration Guides:

NAC: LDAP over SSL on the Clean Access Manager (CAM)
This example will walk you through using SSL with your LDAP Auth Server.

NAC: LDAP Integration with ACS Configuration Example
This example will explain how to use Cisco NAC Profiler for MAC Auth Bypass(MAB) for 802.1X deployments.

To see all the previous Configuration Examples and TechNotes

Configure And Troubleshoot the Antivirus Definition Updates

Cisco posted a new Configuration Guide on how to configure and troubleshoot Antivirus Definition Updates. This is relevant for any deployment using Cisco Preconfigure AV definition rules.

NAC Appliance (Cisco Clean Access): Configure And Troubleshoot the Antivirus Definition Updates

Cisco NAC Profiler Documentation

Cisco NAC Profiler is here, and let me tell you this product makes deployments go a lot smoother. How nice is it not to have to find all of your Printers, IP Fax Machines, UPS management, Game Consoles, etc.

If you are interested in NAC Profiler services or consulting, please contact me jsanbower hotmail.com or visit www.force3.com

To save everyone some time, the following is a list of all the public documentation on Cisco NAC Profiler:

Cisco NAC Profiler Data Sheet
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6128/products_data_sheet0900aecd806b7d4e.html

Cisco NAC Profiler Brochure
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6128/prod_brochure0900aecd806b7e8c.html

Cisco NAC Profiler Q & A
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6128/products_qanda_item0900aecd806b5d40.shtml

Cisco NAC Profiler Ordering Guide
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6128/prod_bulletin0900aecd806b7d69.html

Configuration Guide 2.1.7
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/nac/profiler/configuration_guide/217/nac_profiler_cg.html

Configure and Troubleshoot the Active Directory Windows Single Sign On (SSO)

Cisco posted a new Configuration Guide on how to configure and troubleshoot ADSSO. This is relevant for any deployment using ADSSO and also has some great text on the common error messages and associated resolutions.

NAC Appliance (CCA): Configure and Troubleshoot the Active Directory Windows Single Sign On (SSO)

Mapping Users to Roles using LDAP

Cisco Posted a new Configuration Guide on how to use LDAP to map users to roles. This is relevant for any deployment integrating with LDAP as an auth server (e.g. Active Directory) or performing LDAP lookup with AD SSO.

NAC(CCA) 4.x: Map Users to Certain Roles Using LDAP Configuration Example

Make sure you check it out before your next LDAP auth server deployment.