In discussing its NAC service, Verizon Business raises an issue that is an important element of any NAC deployment - getting diverse teams within an organization to work together on the project.

As part of its service, Verizon provides consultants separate from its technical staff to help customers deal with organizational and operational challenges NAC presents.

Deployments include members of desktop, network and security staff as a matter of course. Application teams are also involved as well, and it is pretty obvious that this group must be involved.

Not so obvious is the involvement of compliance auditors in charge of making sure that the company meets regulations imposed internally or by governmental and industry groups. If NAC is supposed to help meet these requirements, the deployment needs to be vetted by these experts to make sure it actually does.

Human resources can also come into play if NAC will change the types of access available to employees, particularly if it restricts behaviors previously considered acceptable.

And legal teams should also be in the mix to help decide what policies will apply to partners and consultants the business may contract with so NAC requirements can be made part of contractual agreements.

While Verizon supplies a diplomatically inclined representative to guide its customers through NAC deployments, any business with an ongoing NAC project should assemble a team representing the interested parties.

Their goal should be to represent their own departments’ interests, but also to listen to the needs of the other departments and help formulate a successful deployment. (Compare NAC products)

Tim Greene is senior editor at Network World.