Is NAC clawing its way up the "slope of enlightenment"?

Its no secret that over the past year it has been quite fashionable to bash NAC.  It has not lived up to the hype.  It is not the promised silver bullet.  Some companies in the market went belly up.  Yes, yes and true.  But as I have said all along this was I think just the natural evolution of a technology as it matures.  There was no way it could live up to the over hype that it was saddled with.  Those who spoke about it realistically always said it was not the next "great white hope" of security, just another arrow in the quiver. However, the reason that people got excited about NAC was that at a rather simple level it was very easy to describe the problem it was trying to solve.  As it turns out, solving that simple problem takes a rather complex solution, no matter how you slice it.

In the end though what we have seen in the NAC market is textbook hype cycle.  The technology triggers for NAC were unseen before numbers of guests having legitimate reasons to access the network.  The spread of malware not through downloading via the Internet, but by introduction via devices logging on and the need for compliance or otherwise to enforce access policies with the network technologies to make it happen.  With Cisco announcing their Network Admission Control program in December, 2003 and Microsoft announcing NAP that summer (interesting that it would be years before either one was actually available) NAC buzz went through a big bang expansion to the very height of inflated expectations. What goes up, must come down and NAC certainly has been dragged into the trough of disillusionment. However, the inherent appeal of the problems it can solve continue to drive customers and interest.  Now we are seeing real signs of NAC emerging into the slope of enlightenment on the way to the plateau of productivity.

What has got me so optimistic?  It is a variety of things.  Let me list them:

1. Network Computing's 3rd annual NAC survey which while it shows demand is down for NAC from past years, it is still substantial and appears to be deeper if not as wide. It also has several other metrics that show people are being more realistic in what they want to accomplish with NAC and have more confidence that it will work.

2. Forrester's new report that shows that customers think NAC is mature enough to be ready for more wide scale deployments. Remember this is the same Forrester who said that NAC as we know it would fail last year. Has NAC changed so much in a year or has Forrester?

3. That Ebenezer Scrooge of NAC, Mike Rothman, actually admits that maybe we are seeing some progress with less inflated expectations with NAC. What could be next, the NAC Grinch, Richard Stiennon admitting it might be OK as well. Here is my prediction: When Rich's new MSSP can make money offering a managed NAC service, Richard will jump on the NAC bandwagon with bells on.

4. My own observations at Interop, RSA, SANS and other events where I spoke to real live potential customers.  I have personally seen a marked upturn in the amount of real NAC projects that we see coming into both our partners and our sales pipelines. I assume that other NAC products are seeing the same pick up.

All of this is very gratifying to see after the bashing NAC has taken.  Now it is onwards and upwards to the plateau of productivity.   See you there!