SAN JOSE, Calif., December 20, 2004 - Cisco Systems, Inc., today announced that 15 partners are now delivering or scheduled to deliver solutions in the first calendar quarter of 2005 that have met test criteria for interoperability with the Network Admission Control (NAC) program. These solutions will give customers a wider array of security choices to help fortify and protect their networked business systems.

This announcement further reinforces industry momentum around the NAC program including:

• "Today's announcement of 15 partners which are delivering or scheduled to deliver solutions in Q1 2005
• "Nearly two dozen partners joining since Cisco opened a broader NAC vendor integration program last month
• "Success of the first NAC Developer Conference, which fostered broader vendor interest in NAC interoperability and paved the way for future collaborative efforts

For a complete list of new NAC partners signed up as well as partners delivering/scheduled to deliver please visit: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partners/pr46/nac/partners.html

The NAC program is an industry effort led by Cisco Systems that uses the network infrastructure to enforce security policy compliance on all devices seeking access to network computing resources, thereby limiting damage from viruses and worms. Using NAC, organizations can control network access to endpoint devices such as PCs, PDAs, and servers that are verified to be fully compliant with established security policy. NAC can also help identify noncompliant devices and deny them access, place them in a quarantined area for remediation, or give them restricted access to computing resources.

Cisco opened the NAC program to all endpoint security, compliance and patch management vendors in response to the increased customer demand for intelligent collaboration among a wide variety of vendors to build solutions that help protect their businesses from security threats. This vendor agnostic effort provides companies with resources for NAC certification, interoperability testing and marketing. The eventual goal of the NAC effort is to broaden the technology linkages to include vulnerability assessment and security information management, and bring the resulting integration work to the appropriate industry standards bodies.

Cisco also recently hosted a NAC Developer Conference which brought together over 25 vendors representing best-of-breed companies in the anti-virus, and client security market which encompasses vendors in the host intrusion prevention, personal firewall, access management and anti-spyware space, and patch management. At the conference, 10 companies demonstrated NAC interoperability meeting the test criteria, and it also served as a forum to discuss and learn more about the architectural components of NAC, how our mutual customers can benefit from interoperability, and future Cisco product directions within the NAC effort.

"Cisco recognizes that no one company can solve the complex and ever-changing threat landscape," said Bob Gleichauf, Chief Technology Officer in the Security Technology Group at Cisco Systems. "A key benefit of Network Admission Control is that it allows customers to take advantage of their existing endpoint and policy security products through an open framework."

Today's announcement underscores Cisco's continued leadership in the network security market, and is a key component of Cisco's Self Defending Network, Cisco's security strategy to help customers build networks that can identify, respond, and adapt to security threats.

For more information about NAC please visit: www.cisco.com/go/nac