Juniper buys Funk for NAC

Just weeks after announcing its first dedicated product for network access control, Juniper Networks Inc. on Monday said it was buying Funk Software Inc. to boost its network access security products.The move will bring Juniper into more direct competition with chief competitor, Cisco Systems Inc., in the market for NAC solutions.

Juniper will pay $122 million for Cambridge, Mass.-based Funk in an all-cash transaction that must still be approved by the companies' shareholders. Juniper plans to use the Funk technology to extend enforcement of network access control from the company's Net Screen firewalls to Layer 2 switches. Funk made its name providing access control technology such as RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial In User Service), which allows organizations to validate the credentials of users who are trying to access a network. The company was an early supporter and adopter of the TNC open-source NAC technology (see blog entry First TNC product launched )

In May, the company announced new versions of the Steel Belted Radius server and 802.1x Odyssey client that supported TNC standards for client integrity checks and user quarantining. Funk's ability to interoperate with TNC-compliant technology from third-party vendors like Check Point Software Technologies and McAfee was attractive to Juniper, which wants to build a unified architecture for access control that supports "best of class" products from third parties, rather than requiring customers to change their infrastructure just to acquire network access control features.

CATEGORIES : 1aquisition, 1NAC