Frost & Sullivan: Pulse Secure among best NACs for SMB to large enterprise

Access solutions provider Pulse Secure has announced that analyst firm Frost and Sullivan recognised it among the top four major Network Access Control (NAC) leaders in the small-to-medium business (SMB) to large enterprise segment by market share and among the top three NAC vendors showing the most significant market share gains.

The recent Frost and Sullivan 2018 Network Access Control (NAC) Market, Global, Forecast to 2022 report states that network visibility is critical.

Every device on a network is a potential attack or reconnaissance point that must be discovered and secured, and the increasing level of malware and cyber attacks are driving NAC investments.

NAC vendors have been able to add value to licenses by offering added endpoint posture assessment and remediation services, and integration modules.

NAC vendors are delivering improved features and functions for visibility, mobility, Bring your own Device (BYOD), Internet of Things (IoT) and automated threat response.

The result is sustained growth for the NAC market where revenues are expected to grow from 2017 – 2022 at a 16.9% CAGR, reaching $2.1billion in 2022.

The published report provides an overview of the market including NAC capabilities, technology, drivers, adoption trends and competitive insights.

Pulse Secure offers software-driven secure access solutions that satisfy usability, contextual intelligence and policy orchestration to support data center and hybrid IT environments.

Highlights of Pulse Secure's NAC solution within the report include:

• Markets. BYOD, IoT, interoperability and enforcement drive sales in all geographic regions, with financial services, government, healthcare and manufacturing/high tech among Pulse Secure's key markets.
• Product. Pulse Secure NAC provides visibility with enforcement to see, monitor and control managed, unknown and IoT devices connecting locally or remotely to the network.
• Value. Customers can start with Pulse Profiler to discover, assess and inventory network devices. With full network visibility, customers can then use Pulse Policy Secure NAC to invoke access, enforcement and threat response policies, orchestrated via API, Syslog, SNMP and IF-MAP protocols.

The report also cross-references solution attributes compared to other NAC market leaders such as Cisco, ForeScout and Aruba.

According to the report findings, "Unlike pure-play NAC offerings, Pulse Secure's solution can include both VPN and NAC which enables unified visibility, consistent endpoint compliance policy and access control for data center and Hybrid IT.

"Customers gain a stronger security posture, expedited deployment and lower total cost of ownership (TCO) by leveraging a common client, policy and management framework.

"Unlike infrastructure NAC, Pulse Secure works with popular switches, wireless, NGFW, EMM, SIEMs and endpoint security for automated threat response. This proven, interoperable architecture simplifies deployment, administration and orchestration.

Frost - Sullivan senior industry analyst Tony Massimini says, "Network visibility and the increasing level of malware and cyber attacks are driving NAC investments as end-user and IoT devices are ultimately the place where intrusions to networks matter, and the last chance to defend or detect a network breach.

"Pulse Secure provides a complete NAC platform, and when combined with their VPN solution provides enterprises with a centralized view of remote, cloud and network user and device activity and compliance, as well as threat response.