Independent research firm recognizes Microsoft NAP as a leader in Network Access Control

Picked this up from the Windows Server teams blog here. Seems like NAP has been highly recognised by Forrester. I think that NAP is something that interests almost every company that I talk to. And I think the real key to NAP is the management solutions that we already have through Windows Server 2008, Group Policy and SCCM 2007….

Microsoft’s Network Access Protection (NAP) solution was cited as a leader (the top category) in a recent independent report, “The Forrester Wave: Network Access Control, Q3 2008.”  Microsoft was one of the many network access control (NAC) vendors invited to participate in the report.

Forrester placed a lot of emphasis on different access control scenarios for the evaluation and the different vendors were evaluated around twelve different scenarios as well as strengths across technology, strategy and market presence.

“Microsoft has the strongest NAC product for managed endpoints,” the report stated. The report goes on to state that even though its official product has only been shipping since the inception of Windows Server 2008, Microsoft has already established itself as a critical thought leader and contributor to the standardizations of NAC. “Microsoft has the overall highest score among the 12 scenarios we evaluated,” the report added.

Microsoft Network Access Protection ships with Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista and XP SP3, and has a framework that provides interoperability with over 100 different vendors. The NAP statement of health (SOH) has also been adopted as a standard by the Trusted Computing Group’s Trusted Network Connect (TNC).

More information about Microsoft NAP can be found here https://www.microsoft.com/nap