ForeScout Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of continuous monitoring and mitigation solutions for Global 2000 enterprises and government organisations, announced that Frost & Sullivan has recognised ForeScout’s increased enterprise Network Access Control(NAC) market share and leadership in the NAC market. ForeScout was distinguished as offering the most versatile platform, possessing the largest deployments in terms of endpoints protected and being competitively rated the highest to meet market demand.

According to the Frost & Sullivan Global Analysis of the Network Access Control (NAC) Market report published in December 2014, the NAC market is estimated to grow by more than 38 percent over the previous year. The three fastest-selling NAC solutions in both large enterprises and small medium businesses (SMBs) are, respectively, Cisco, ForeScout and Juniper, which represent more than 69 percent of the NAC market. Frost & Sullivan estimates that ForeScout has 24.3 percent of the global enterprise NAC market and that ForeScout has some of the largest NAC deployments.

The comprehensive NAC report states that NAC products are essential and well regarded within network security teams. From 2010 through 2018, Frost & Sullivan anticipates a CAGR of 29.5 percent. The research indicates that the size of NAC deployments is getting larger. Enterprise and mid-sized networks are expanding to include more devices per employee and bring your own device (BYOD). Beyond “greenfield” opportunities, organic growth is also happening as IT directors are dismissing first-generation NAC issues and realising next generation NAC capabilities and advantages. Prior installations are upgrading and expanding requirements and implementation coverage at the time of contract renewals.

The comprehensive market analysis highlights drivers, technology trends, competitive landscape and required product competence. The analysts determined NAC products are able to solve top IT challenges and deliver tangible business value to customers. A leading reason for NAC platform adoption is the shift in the value proposition away from that of restrictive, device authentication-based technology to one that fortifies endpoint compliance, enables BYOD and helps organisations streamline or automate a broad range of IT operations.

Key market drivers identified in the report are:

• Provides complete endpoint visibility
• Allows for integration with other security platforms
• Creates contextual awareness leading to more operational intelligence
• Provides endpoint visibility than can be applied to inventories and compliance reporting
• Evolved to match the way that businesses have evolved network architecture and access

“In our recent study, we found ForeScout to have the most versatile platform that exceeds market demands and offers the means to improve the efficacy of other security tools through its ControlFabric™ integration architecture,” said Chris Kissel, network security industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan. “ForeScout provides a highly extensible, interoperable and scalable network security solution that is especially beneficial in enterprise deployments.”

The report also affirms that bidirectional integration with other network and security platforms will continue to differentiate NAC vendors and be valued by customers. As such, NAC vendors actively seek integration with other network defences, including: advanced threat detection (ATD), antivirus (AV), virtual private networks (VPN), vulnerability management (VM), security information and event management (SIEM), mobile device management (MDM), firewalls and Web gateways.⁵

“ForeScout and our partners continue to realise tremendous sales growth in the large commercial enterprise, government and mid-tier market segments. We believe that our platform offers superior usability, deployment, management and ROI achievement, which are top priorities for our customers,” said Brant Kennedy, executive vice president of worldwide sales at ForeScout Technologies. “We appreciate Frost & Sullivan recognising us as leaders in the NAC market, as NAC is a cornerstone technology that enables IT organisations to achieve continuous monitoring and mitigation.”