Maintaining network security and operational efficiency today requires a new technology that can accurately identify every user and device, provision and secure devices, help get them on the network, and use policy to control where they can go from any access media: wired, wireless, or VPN.

To satisfy this need, EXD proposes the Cisco® Identity Services Engine (ISE), an all-in-one enterprise policy control for comprehensive wired, wireless, and VPN access control; more productive workers; and lower OpEx. It features rigorous identification technologies that can create contextual identities, such as user, device, or location. This solution applies policies enforced at the point of access, which enforces and validates security compliance. Workers can easily onboard, secure their devices, and obtain access to their services from any location. It can help reduce costs by making security operations easy and more efficient, using the existing network infrastructure to enforce policy and extend value by supporting next-generation TrustSec networking. The proposed solution provides clients many benefits, including:

• Advanced, anywhere access: ISE provisions policy on the network access device in real-time, so mobile or remote users can get consistent access to their services from wherever they enter the network.
• Increased employee availability: Through wired, wireless, and VPN networks, Cisco ISE helps enterprises to more easily authenticate and authorize users. This means more uptime and availability for employees who want to work from any location, at any time, from any device.
• Improved security policy enforcement: Cisco ISE enforces security policies by blocking, isolating, and repairing non-compliant machines in a quarantine area without needing administrator attention. Cisco ISE can be set up with alerts for IT administrators for 24/7 policy enforcement of your network security protocols.
• Enhanced infrastructure security: Cisco ISE allows clients to gather real-time contextual information from the network, users, and devices, and makes proactive governance decisions by enforcing policy across the entire network infrastructure.