Bangalore: Cisco Systems, the world leader in networking, today (Dec 8, 2003) announced the launch of Cisco network admission control programme in association with leading anti-virus software vendors including Network Associates, Symantec and Trend Micro.

"The programme will enable customers to leverage their Cisco Network infrastructure to limit damage from viruses and worms. This industry-wide collaboration is intended to address a broad and growing concern among enterprise customers – the remediation costs resulting from worms and viruses," a Cisco systems release said.

Through the collaboration, the anti-virus software vendors have licensed a key component of this programme, the Cisco trust agent, a software agent that resides on an end node system and communicates with the Cisco network.

The agent collects security state information from multiple security software clients, such as anti-virus clients, and communicates this information to the connected Cisco network where access control decisions are enforced.

Initially, the Cisco network admission control programme will support endpoints running Microsoft Windows NT, XP and 2000 operating systems, the release said.

"The programme has been developed to deliver complementary technologies that will work together to deliver the most advanced protection available for enterprise environments," said Naresh Wadhwa, Vice- President, Cisco Systems India.

PTI