Juniper Networks Customer Case Study
"Due to the high quality documentation Microsoft provided for the protocols we licensed for Windows Server 2008, our developers were able to implement these protocols within our application in very short order. This allowed us to deliver our product to market on time due in part to Microsoft's great support." -Karthik Krishan, Director of Product Management
Juniper Networks
Number of Employees: 6,000
Country or region: USA
Industry: Network Infrastructure, Information Security
The Company
Juniper Networks offers a high-performance network infrastructure that creates a responsive and trusted environment for accelerating the deployment of services and applications over a single network, fueling high-performance businesses.
Juniper focuses on customers who derive strategic value from their networks and face constant trade-offs in their efforts to deliver a secure and dependable experience to their users:
Protecting their infrastructure in the face of a rapidly evolving threat landscape, versus providing open and flexible network services to all users
Achieving sophisticated network intelligence at scale, versus optimizing performance
Enjoying the flexibility and economics of the Internet, versus employing the security and reliability of private networks
Juniper Networks addresses these trade-offs with a high-performance infrastructure that tightly integrates security and networking so that they work synergistically together. With this type of infrastructure, customers can have a sophisticated intelligent network without sacrificing security, reliability or scalability. This helps ensure the delivery and performance of communications based on the specific needs of applications and users.
"Due to the high quality documentation Microsoft provided about the protocols we licensed, our developers were able to quickly implement these protocols within our applications. This allowed us to deliver our product to market much sooner than we initially anticipated." -Karthik Krishan, Director of Product Management
The Business Problem
Increased user mobility, progressively sophisticated attacks, rising regulatory and industry compliance requirements, offshore outsourcing, and the increased use of contractors all contribute to the need to secure and control network access—not only for remote users, but also when these users and their devices return to the LAN. This new reality necessitates a comprehensive solution that offers different levels of network resource access depending upon the identity and access authority of the user, their device's security state, their location, and the security and integrity of their access network.
The Solution
Juniper Networks' Unified Access Control (UAC) solution combines user identity, device security state and location information for session-specific access policy by user enforced throughout the network. Juniper's UAC is an open, standards-based solution built on field-tested, best-in-class security and access control products. It enables a phased approach to deploying network and application access control, leveraging existing enterprise network investments and deployments.
UAC enforces policy at Layer 2 using any 802.1X-enabled wireless access point or switch, including the Juniper’s EX-series switches, at Layers 3 - 7 using any Juniper firewall platform, including Juniper Secure Services Gateways (SSG) or Intregrated Security Gateways,(ISG) with Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDP), or both.
UAC expands access control to network traffic, delivering ubiquitous protection by implementing simultaneous security enforcement deeper in the network's core and outward to the network's edge. It delivers access control, visibility, and monitoring, protecting the enterprise network and applications while helping reduce the cost and complexity of deploying and managing access control.
Applications Based on OS
UAC natively supports Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows XP SP3, as well as Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices.
Microsoft Protocol Programs Implementation Details
UAC implements the Windows Security Health Agent, Windows Security Health Validator protocols and the RADIUS Extensions for NAP (RNAP) protocol for Windows Server. This allows Juniper's UAC solution to check the health state of Windows Vista clients without the need for agent download. RNAP allows UAC to talk directly to Windows Server Network Policy Server (NPS) to determine compliance to network access policy.
Results
Implementation of these protocols has increased customer choice for those customers with heterogeneous network policy management solutions. Customers can keep the Windows Server NPS implementation they have today and add Juniper UAC for more fine-grained control. Conversely, customers who want an access control solution today can deploy UAC, and then deploy Windows Server later as they build out their solution.
Level of Satisfaction with Microsoft Open Protocols Support Team
Microsoft has provided complete and timely support for initial development of products supporting these protocols. This support is not limited to only the protocol documentation, but Microsoft also provided input to the architectures for products that may implement the protocols in the future—helping ensure Juniper customers have support for the latest Microsoft protocols.