Through the program, announced in November, Cisco is teaming with vendors such as IBM, Network Associates, Symantec and Trend Micro to integrate security technology with its infrastructure products as part of its strategy to deliver "self-defending" networks.
"This gives our channel partners another reason to go back in and talk to customers about the value they can add in terms of implementing new technology to protect them from attacks," King said.
Cisco's NAC functionality gives customers the ability to restrict network access from devices such as PCs, servers and PDAs that are not compliant with their established security policies in areas including operating system patch level or antivirus state.
In keeping with the schedule outlined at the program's launch, Cisco said the program now supports its 830 to 7200 Series access and midrange routers running release 12.3(8)T of its Internetwork Operating System (IOS) using the Advanced Security image or higher. Other products now available in support of the program include Cisco Secure Access Control Server version 3.3, Cisco Security Agent version 4.0.2 and CiscoWorks Security Information Management Solution version 3.2.
Cisco is also releasing version 1.0 of its Trust Agent, available now for most Microsoft Windows operating systems. Trust Agent resides on end points to collect information from antivirus programs and communicate the data back to the network. In the future, Cisco plans to add support for Windows 2003, Linux and Solaris.
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