Microsoft and Cisco work on security

Keeping the spirit of "coopetition" alive, Cisco Systems and Microsoft on Wednesday said they're delivering on a two-year-old promise to make their network-access security offerings interoperable.

At The Security Standard conference in Boston this week, the two companies are demonstrating an interoperable architecture that will enable customers to use both Cisco's Network Admission Control (NAC) and Microsoft's Network Access Protection (NAP) technologies. Both offerings are designed to protect corporate networks by verifying the security health status of devices before granting them access.

With Cisco and Microsoft unveiling definitive interoperability plans, channel partners should expect more robust sales of network access solutions, said Christian Rolland, CTO of VLSystems, an Irvine, Calif.-based solution provider.

"The biggest value in the announcement is to ease customers' minds about going ahead and moving forward with NAC today. It's not going to be obsolete, and they'll be able to leverage the investment," Rolland said. "The opportunity it creates for us is tremendous."