| 1.4 |  | Security Products and Solutions |
| 1.4.2 |  | Identity |

| A wide range of security technologies exist that provide solutions for securing network access and data transport mechanisms within the corporate network infrastructure. Many of the technologies overlap in solving problems that relate to ensuring user or device identity, data integrity, and data confidentiality.

Throughout this course, authentication, authorization, and access control are incorporated into the concept of identity . Although these concepts are distinct, they all pertain to each individual user of the network, be it a person or device. Each person or device is a distinct entity that has separate abilities within the network and is allowed access to resources based on who they are. Although in the purest sense, identity pertains only to authentication, in many cases, it makes sense to discuss authorization and access control at the same time:

- Authentication is the process of validating the claimed identity of an end user or a device, such as clients, servers, switches, routers, and firewalls.
- Authorization is the process of granting access rights to a user, groups of users, or specified system.
- Access control is limiting the flow of information from the resources of a system to only authorized persons or systems in the network , .

This course will also describe security technologies commonly used for ensuring some degree of data integrity and confidentiality in a network:

- Data integrity ensures that the data has not been altered or destroyed except by people who are explicitly intended to modify it.
- Data confidentiality ensures that only the entities who are allowed to see the data see it in a usable format.

The intent is to develop a basic understanding of how these technologies can be implemented in corporate networks and to identify their strengths and weaknesses. The following categories have been selected in an attempt to group the protocols according to shared attributes:

- Identity technologies
- Security in TCP/IP structured layers
- Virtual Private Networks
- IPSec
- Public Key Infrastructure and distribution models

The Cisco Secure Access Control Server (ACS) is a high-performance, highly scalable, centralized user access control framework , . Cisco Secure ACS offers centralized command and control for all user authentication, authorization, and accounting from a Web-based, graphical interface, and distributes those controls to hundreds or thousands of access gateways in the network.