In ISE 1.0 Cisco introduced an integrated Guest solution with a next-generation RADIUS-based policy server.  That policy server was game-changing, certainly.  Other companies responded to this market changing model by making some very strategic moves with their chess pieces to be similarly positioned. Figure 1 shows an example of the ISE 1.2.x (and below) Sponsor … Continue reading Give me my Attribute mapping back for Sponsor Groups →

I'm amused at how often I hear negative comments about proprietary enhancements from Cisco.  I am one of many (many, many, many) employees of Cisco who is actively involved in standards body organizations, including the IETF.  Many of today's networking standards have started out as proprietary solutions that are available years prior to the standard being complete. … Continue reading Standards for Secure-Network-Access →

I'm sure Cisco would love to be the only network device that its customer have, and to be honest, there are many companies where that is true. However, it is just not the reality of 100% of companies that deploy Cisco ISE or ACS. One item in particular that I am asked about frequently is … Continue reading MAB with Non-Cisco Devices →

I find a few universal truths when mentioning certificates to people. Most people I speak with consider them to be a very secure concept almost without fail. However upon mentioning that I want to talk about certificates: that person's face turns a slightly lighter shade, their eyes get a bit wider, and they have this … Continue reading Simply Put: How Does Certificate-Based Authentication Work? →

I am often asked about support for “Realm Stripping”, albeit mostly by those in the University Space.  It’s an interesting concept, certainly.  The idea is that someone will issue an identity that includes some “routing” information within the identity.  For example, a user may issue a username of: johndoe@somedomain.com.  From that username, the RADIUS server … Continue reading Realm Stripping →

What is DogTag and Why Use It? Dog Tag is an Enterprise-class open source Certificate Authority that Red Hat purchased from AOL back in 2004.  Red Hat opened it up to the open source community in 2008.  Dog Tag supports all aspects of certificate lifecycle management, including key archival, OCSP and smartcard management, and much … Continue reading Using the DogTag CA with ISE 1.2 →

A little less than 1/2 of all Identity Service Engine installations are on VMWare.  Yes it's true.  About 45% of all ISE nodes deployed in this world are Virtual.  What I don't know is:  how many are in production and how many are in a lab. Let me give you another statistic (my own).  When … Continue reading Using VNC for Console Access to ISE (and other) VM’s →

What is a Wildcard Certificate? A wildcard certificate is one that uses a wildcard notation (an asterisk and period before the domain name) and allows the certificate to be shared across multiple hosts in an organization.  An example CN value for a wildcard certificate’s Subject Name would look like the following:  *.company.local If you configure … Continue reading What are WildCard Certificates? And how do I use them with Cisco’s ISE →

Hi all! Back again. In my last blog (which admittedly was a bit long, and verbose) I discussed the changing landscape of Identity Networking. With Identity Networking there are many different ways of controlling network access based on the context of a user and device. There is: VLAN assignment, in which access is controlled at … Continue reading Security Group Tagging Basics →

I was asked to travel to the 2013 InfoSec security conference in Europe this year, and speak about the trends I am seeing in the identity networking game, and possibly speculate on the future of identity in networking as I see it.  So I thought to myself: “what a great blog post this could make”. … Continue reading The Changing Landscape of Identity Networking →