Network Access Control

Forescout continuously discovers, classifies, assesses, and controls every connected device across IT, IoT, OT, IoMT, cloud, wired, wireless, and VPN environments. It detects devices the moment they connect using agentless visibility and more than 20 active and passive discovery techniques, automatically classifies them, assesses their security posture and risk, and enforces policy-based access decisions. Forescout supports both 802.1X and non-802.1X environments, enabling least-privilege access, automated compliance enforcement, and rapid containment of unauthorized, rogue, noncompliant, or high-risk devices without requiring infrastructure upgrades or agents on every endpoint.

Forescout discovers every IPv4 and IPv6 connected device, auto-classifies it, and assesses its compliance without agents. Forescout continuously discovers, classifies, and assesses every connected asset, managed or unmanaged, across IT, OT, IoT, IoMT, and cloud environments using more than 30 passive and active monitoring techniques. Devices are identified the moment they connect to the network, providing real-time visibility, contextual asset intelligence, and continuous assessment of security posture and risk.

Yes. Forescout provides cloud-managed network access control through a unified cloud management experience that extends visibility, policy management, and control across campus, remote, data center, IoT, OT, IoMT, and cloud environments. Forescout centralizes asset intelligence, access policies, risk context, and enforcement workflows while integrating with existing wired, wireless, VPN, virtual, and cloud infrastructure. This enables organizations to continuously discover, assess, and control connected assets from a single cloud-managed interface without requiring major infrastructure changes or upgrades.

• Traditional NAC systems use trusted approaches like 802.1X protocol, VLAN quarantining, ARP-based control, and port mirroring for access control.
• Next-gen NAC solutions like Forescout for Network Security are not just security solutions, but comprehensive ones. They deliver complete asset visibility and control across the network, including BYOD and OT/IoT devices without stringent requirements on 802.1x. This level of coverage can provide a sense of security and confidence to network engineers and security teams, who can implement these technologies as part of a robust ecosystem that leverages hundreds of integrations for advanced features and functions across the IT stack.

Unlike traditional NAC solutions that primarily focus on managed corporate endpoints and 802.1X authentication, Forescout provides agentless visibility, assessment, and control for all connected assets, including unmanaged IoT, OT, and IoMT devices that cannot run agents or support 802.1X. Forescout continuously discovers devices the moment they connect, assesses identity, posture, behavior, compliance, and risk, and enforces policy-based access decisions before and after connection across both 802.1X and non-802.1X environments. This enables organizations to extend Zero Trust controls across heterogeneous networks without requiring infrastructure upgrades, agents on every device, or complex NAC deployments.

• National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publications (NIST SP) includes a set of recommended security and privacy controls for federal information systems and organizations to help meet the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) requirements.
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)- modern NAC helps enforce access controls and security policies for protecting sensitive health information.
• Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)- modern NAC helps maintain and report on internal controls.
• Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) Modern NAC supports compliance by controlling access to cardholder data environments and enforcing security policies.

• Forescout for Network Security continuously discovers, identifies and maintains accurate asset inventories, enabling classification and assessment that organizations can use to verify the identity and integrity of everything attempting network access. The solution then automatically applies the most granular, least-privilege access controls and security policies. This granularity helps enforce Zero Trust principles by ensuring that only authenticated, compliant assets access the network.

Forescout delivers flexible, policy-based network access control across IT, OT, IoT, IoMT, cloud, wired, wireless, VPN, IPv4, and IPv6 environments. Forescout continuously discovers and classifies assets, evaluates identity, posture, compliance, and risk, and enforces least-privilege access policies across both 802.1X and non-802.1X networks. It also integrates with existing security and IT investments to share device context, automate workflows, and orchestrate response actions across the broader ecosystem.

Forescout uses agentless discovery and classification to identify IoT devices the moment they connect, including devices that cannot run agents or support 802.1X. Forescout then applies risk-based access controls using device identity, type, behavior, location, and compliance status, enabling least-privilege access, segmentation, and automated containment of unmanaged IoT devices without requiring agents or infrastructure upgrades.

Yes. Access control is a built-in platform capability, listed as Pre- and Post-Connect Access Control within Forescout’s security core alongside asset intelligence, OT/ICS anomaly and threat detection, and ecosystem integration modules. More broadly, NAC is a security policy in which specific devices receive differing levels of network access based on a given set of conditions.

• Every organization is made up of Cyber Assets and Users accessing resources via a network fabric. Regardless of the type of asset, these are systems with Network Interface Cards, MAC addresses, IP addresses, TCP/IP stacks, operating systems and they are providing a service. What that service IS, determines the criticality and role of that asset. Many organizations have established a cyber eco-system of products that communicate through or makeup the network fabric layer to provide security of cyber assets. The function or service that assets provide, and the cyber ecosystem of tools may vary, but there is one constant. Complete security starts with cyber asset awareness and an accurate inventory of ALL assets and where they are.
• Forescout actively integrates with the network fabric out-of-the-box and passively monitors asset communications to DISCOVER which assets are on the network and where they are. This network integration is a critical step that most vendors overlook. While passive monitoring is quick and simple, it isn’t holistic, won’t discover devices that aren’t communicating through chokepoints, doesn’t scale well, and ultimately won’t address the challenges we’ve discussed.
• Once Forescout has identified all connected assets, it ASSESSES what they are through a collection of active and passive methods that we will discuss shortly. The information is enriched through Forescout’s Cloud services. The Forescout Cloud consists of billions of datapoints to accurately assess device types, associated risks, and potential threats.
• Then, Forescout integrates out-of-the-box with your existing cyber ecosystem to enrich these investments by making sure they are configured properly on assets. It also orchestrates sharing of insights and data between investments. Lastly, Forescout takes its collection of assets and insights gained through discover and assess to CONTROL your digital terrain. This comes in the form of workflow automation to remediate assets directly, control access via the network, automate ticketing, automate CMDB updates, and a whole myriad of other 3rd party workflows.

Cloud Management is a platform module alongside network segmentation, Forescout, risk and exposure assessment, automated CIS compliance, and threat detection and response. Cloud delivery comes through Forescout’s unified cloud console over existing Forescout deployments and Forescout’s cloud-native standalone or hybrid deployment, with support for virtual and cloud environments.

Yes. Forescout offers cloud-native deployment, running standalone for fast cloud-native visibility with immediate device discovery, classification and real-time risk, or in hybrid scenarios alongside existing Forescout deployments. Forescout adds a unified cloud console extending existing Forescout deployments beyond the campus, and Cloud Management is available as a platform module.