Highlights: 

  • TACACS is a software-as-a-service solution by Portnox that provides network device authentication, authorization, and accounting services.
  • To drive its expansion, the company has significantly boosted its personnel count in sales, marketing, product, engineering, and other departments.

Portnox, one of the leaders in network access control and management solutions, recently introduced a cloud-native TACACS solution that it claims is simple to set up and use. It is also affordable for mid-market businesses. Most firms recognize that the IT workers, who operate their networks, require a higher level of access management. Keeping this in mind, the firm has launched the TACACS  solution to help midmarket businesses manage network device administration and access management across increasingly distributed networks easily.

“TACACS is a standard protocol. It’s been out for a long time, but no one has a cloud-based solution,” said Portnox CEO Denny LeCompte. “Many IT departments that would find TACACS really valuable don’t use it because it’s too much trouble. That’s why we built a cloud-based version.”

According to LeCompte, the cloud-based solution allows even small IT teams of two or three people to benefit from TACACS without spending USD 50,000 to USD 100,000 on a full-fledged Network Access Control (NAC) product that includes the technology.

TACACS offers a variety of services 

The Portnox software-as-a-service TACACS solution offers services such as network device authentication, authorization and accounting services, including:

  • User authentication for network devices via Open LDAP and integrations with Azure Active Directory, Google Workspace, Microsoft Active Directory and Okta.
  • Enforcement of policies for network device access and configuration changes to privilege levels, allowed services, auto-commands, custom attributes, and more.
  • Automated audit trails for user activity and attributes across network devices such as user identities, start and stop times, executed commands, and packet transfers.

According to LeCompte, the audit feature can be valuable to larger IT teams. “Imagine you have five engineers. Someone makes a change. They mess up, and suddenly a whole bunch of connectivity on the network is lost,” LeCompte says.

“How do you figure out what happened? Without a TACACS solution, you will have to retrace your steps manually. With TACACS , you can go through logs and know who made the last change and what changes they made.”

According to LeCompte, without TACACS , administrators often offer blanket credentials to users and trust them to notify any changes they make to the network. Security issues associated with staff turnover can also be addressed with TACACS .

“We tie our product to Active Directory,” LeCompte explains. “So, when an IT staffer leaves and their AD account is turned off, they no longer have access because all their access was through our TACACS service.”

Portnox is giving a free tier of service that supports one administrator and up to 100 network devices, such as wireless access points and wired switches, to encourage TACACS use.

The new cloud-native Portnox TACACS -as-a-Service solution provides network device authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) services and has already helped over 1,000 enterprises worldwide manage the ever-changing cybersecurity landscape.

Portnox is also working on workforce expansion 

Portnox has spent extensively on its product and people since it closed its Series A funding earlier in 2022. COO Said Aziz, CMO Marie-Laure Carvalho, and CRO Shon Turner are among the notable new C-Suite recruits. To drive its expansion, the company has significantly boosted its personnel count in sales, marketing, product, engineering, and other departments across the United States, Europe, and Israel, increasing its workforce by more than 50% since the beginning of 2022.