News @ Cisco: Cisco and Microsoft Team to Improve Network Security

News @ Cisco: Cisco and Microsoft Team to Improve Network Security: "What are the terms of the collaboration?
Bob Muglia: As a first step, we've agreed to ensure that Cisco's Network Admission Control (NAC) and Microsoft's Network Access Protection (NAP) security architectures will work together by understanding and passing enforcement decisions between them. Cisco and Microsoft will share application programmer interfaces (APIs) and protocols to ensure that compatibility. As a result, customers will be able to deploy components of each architecture that best serve their needs
Jayshree Ullal: This is a long-term, multi-phased collaboration to share and integrate each other's network security products and technologies. This will make it easier for our customers to defend their IT resources and manage their security. Specifically, Cisco is giving Microsoft a license to evaluate the Cisco NAC wire protocol for use as part of the Microsoft quarantine system, and Microsoft is giving Cisco a license to evaluate the Microsoft NAP client and server APIs as a way to build interoperability into future versions of Cisco NAC. Cisco and Microsoft have also pledged to work toward driving industry standards in network admissions and access control technologies to help promote wide market adoption, making integrated security defenses more viable."