Cisco Systems officials in April introduced their Identity Services Engine, designed to help enterprises track visitors coming onto their corporate networks.
Cisco s ISE was created to manage not only visitors such as freelancers, customers or contract workers who need access to the corporate network, but also in response to the growing trend of employees demanding access through their personal computing devices -- including smartphones and tablets.
The BYOD (bring your own device) trend is putting a strain on IT staffs, who are tasked with balancing the employees desires with the need to protect the corporate network and the critical data it houses. Cisco s ISE is designed to help administrators do just that, by enabling them to enforce policies that determine who is allowed on the network and what their access privileges are, all the while keeping the network safe and secure.
When launched in April, Cisco's ISE was made to enable businesses to cover both wired and wireless networks. Now the giant networking vendor is offering businesses another option: wireless-only licenses for ISE. The goal is to give businesses that want to take incremental steps in enforcing access policies a way to start initially with wireless networks.
"Cisco ISE for Wireless is targeted for customers that need to address challenges brought about by their employees connecting their own wireless devices to the network, as well as guest users," Cisco blogger Ben Stricker said in an Aug. 15 post on the Cisco Mobility Blog. "Cisco ISE for wireless also simplifies guest access management by providing an integrated self-service model to securely allow guest users to connect to the wireless networks."
In addition, businesses can later move from the ISE for Wireless license to include wired networks and VPN endpoints by buying an upgrade license, according to Stricker. It also dovetails with Cisco's Borderless Networks initiative, which is designed to give anyone access to the corporate network anytime and from any device.
To read the original eWeek article, click here:
Cisco Offers a Wireless-Only Version of Its ISE
