How to use Windows 2008 access control

How to use Windows 2008 access control

The Windows Server 2008 comes with a security feature referred to as Network Access Protection that ensures that all computers on a network are secure and configured within the network busting the overall security and controls the access to the organization’s network.

It is a window based application designed to restrict other an authorized devices from accessing the network and it usually examines computers in order to determine if they are complying with the configuration rules for the organization by checking security, security updates and configuration settings.

Whenever a computer that is not compliant tries to access the network, it is isolated and has first to update its configuration settings from remedial servers by installing the required software before it can be allowed to access the network.  The Network Access Protection (NAP) has two main components:

• NAP client which runs on the other computer device that want to connect to the organization's network. By collecting information about the other computer trying to access the organization network, it sends this information over to the Network Policy Server (NPS) to be analyzed and it on the basis of this that it determines which computers can access the network.
• The NAP client has a main component that controls Enforcement Agents which can access the network called the NAP Agent and System Health Agents (SHAs) which determine and report on the state of a computer on which it is running. It is this information collected by the NAP Agent that is summed up together and sent to the NPS for analysis.
• NAP Network Policy Server (NPS) job is to determine a computer's level of compliance and therefore the level of connection that can be allowed. Together with other network infrastructures (VPN servers, routers and switches) it receives the health report sent by the NAP client and determines the level access it grants to a computer according to its analysis of compliance level.
• Mirroring the NAP client, the NPS contains a service that allows it to communicate with computer devices that run the client and server validation components used to interpret the Statement of Health (SOH) reports collected by the NAP agent. It then makes an analysis of the report the NAP client sends and determines if the computer device trying to access the network is in compliant with the policies of the organization which are configured by the network administrator through the administration console which also configures the third party SHSs and SHVs.

It is from this analysis of the SOH reports that the NPS together with the network infrastructure determines whether to grant or deny a computer device access to the organizations network.