2.7. Off-Shoring and Outsourcing

The ability to find the best product or service at the best price helps keep companies profitable. Outsourcing aspects of business helps companies grow and retain their margins. A form of outsourcing, called off-shoring (outsourcing production of a good or service, or outsourcing a business process such as manufacturing, to a company that's based outside of your company's country) has helped to grow the world economy while keeping spiraling prices in check, allowing companies to keep their margins up by controlling the cost of goods or services. These savings also help keep consumer prices in check.

Although outsourcing and off-shoring provide clear benefits to business, these services include very real gotchas for networking and security. Outsourcers and off-shore partners, like contractors and local partners, may require access to sensitive corporate resources and assets stored on the company's network to be productive and perform their duties. And, like contractors and partners, they may be conducting their business either locally or remotely.

Whether the outsourcer or offshore partner accesses the corporate network via Ethernet at the corporate offices or via VPN, your company should provide them with differentiated network access that has unique authentication credentials:

• Your company's NAC solution needs to check the devices that the outsourcer or off-shore partners use to connect to the corporate network to make sure that those devices meet the access policies put in place by your company.

• Outsourcers and off-shore partners should receive access rights only to the information stored on the corporate network for which they need access to perform their jobs effectively.

• Your company — through its NAC solution — probably should segment the information to which outsourcers or off-shore partners require access from the rest of their corporate network data by using firewalls or a virtual local area network (VLAN), by segmenting the information on physically different servers, or by other means.

NAC can deliver secure, necessary network, application, and data access by outsourcers and off-shore partners for your company. It can ensure that the outsourcer and off-shore entity, no matter how they access the corporate network, can't access the network until the NAC solution authenticates them; that their devices meet (and, in many NAC cases, maintain) compliance with corporate access and security policies; and that the NAC solution — either standalone or working through network enforcement points, such as switches, wireless access points, and firewalls — grants them access only to the network areas and applications to which they have appropriate access rights. If an outsourcer or off-shore entity doesn't meet any one of these requirements, or if they attempt to circumvent appropriate access rights, the company — through its NAC solution, and network enforcement points — can terminate outsourcer or off-shore partner's network session and revoke their access rights.

Off-shoring and outsourcing addresses a vital need for business, and you can ensure that it doesn't become an issue or problem for your company or their network. Securing your network, applications, and data for outsourcing and off-shoring depends on how your company wants to deploy NAC, and how sternly and strongly you want to enforce your policies.