Network access control (NAC) vendors recently made four significant technological improvements to make their platforms indispensable to network security. These enhancements include the offer of endpoint visibility, bidirectional integration with other network and security platforms, adding ‘context’ to controls and enabling network orchestration.
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Network Access Control (NAC) Global Market finds that the market earned revenues of $592.5 million in 2015 and estimates this to reach $1.83 billion by 2020. Revenue growth is outpacing the growth in unit shipment, indicating that the monetary value of contracts won by NAC vendors is rising.
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“While endpoint visibility provides crucial information about corporate assets, specialised devices, their location and the security posture of endpoints, bidirectional integration helps build a stronger cyber network foundation,” said Frost & Sullivan Digital Transformation Research Analyst Christopher Kissel. “With true endpoint visibility and improved posture assessment, NAC is able to give context to controls and lastly, network orchestration allows NAC to be the central console of IT and security operations.”
Unlike in the past when network administrators and security teams had the luxury of managing devices through Ethernet and stateful firewalls, a modern business network must account for transient devices, remote branch offices and contract and guest registrations. In such an environment, NAC is proving highly relevant as pre-registration of devices onto a network is one of its important features. It benefits all the network phases of IT, operations and security.
However, NAC solutions are generally deployed in mature network and security environments. Companies have their own security information and event management (SIEM), vulnerability management (VM) and other cyber perimeter tools that create security blind spots. Additionally, the teams must find a way to protect network access even as the network security surface expands.
Despite these issues, companies prefer to deploy NAC platforms for its superior endpoint visibility. There is a marked growth in the number of NAC deployments as enterprise and medium-sized market networks become larger to include more devices per employee and bring-your-own-device (BYOD).
“Beyond greenfield market opportunities, the market is also experiencing organic growth as companies migrate from first-generation NAC features to next-generation NAC capabilities,” noted Kissel. “When contracts come up for renewals, clients often demand richer feature sets including endpoint posture assessment and risk-based probability, which offers vendors a plethora of opportunities to upsell.”
Overall, instead of simply imposing rules and role-based access controls, NAC platforms are integrating and improving other security tools, helping provide fidelity for risk-based analytics, and facilitating contextual awareness for security incident and forensics investigations. These benefits have resulted in truly next-generation NAC platforms that open up opportunities for revenue growth.
Network Access Control (NAC) Global Market is part of the Network Security Growth Partnership Service program. Frost & Sullivan’s related studies include: The Best of Network Security 2016, Global Software Licensing and Monetisation Market, 2016 Latin America Outlook for the Information Technology Services Industry, as well as Australia, APAC, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines Data Center Services Market 2016. All studies included in subscriptions provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants.
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