Security, Surveillance & Survival

Cisco Drives Intel-Funded Startup to Ruin

Lockdown Networks just locked itself out of the market

By Bogdan Botezatu, Hardware Editor

21st of March 2008, 14:23 GMT

Adjust text size:

Lockdown Networks, one of the Intel-funded prodigal sons, was forced to shut down its activities because of "economic conditions and a lack of demand" in its network access control products. The company

made the mistake of competing against the network giant Cisco in the network access control business.

Intel started investing big money into the startup via the Intel Capital division, as the chip manufacturer considered that it will gain control on the Network Access Control market.

Network access control (NAC) is a new technology that denies unauthorized or non-compliant devices the access to the network. As a rule, the "non-compliant" term refers to machines that are running without the latest security patch, without an antivirus, or with an antivirus that has not been updated. When such devices are connected to the network, the network access control software kindly denies the connection request.

Cisco seems to be extremely proud of their Network Access Control technology. However, the Lockdown Networks website reads that the company has to shutdown because of the NAC technology's low spreading.

"Due to overall economic trends and slower than predicted adoption of Network Access Control (NAC) technology, the company was unable to raise sufficient venture capital to continue," claimed the company.

Most of the company's employees are now out, yet Lockdown Networks will keep some of them in order to process the bids for its patents and other intellectual property assets.

Apart from Cisco, other small technology vendors are currently offering their NAC-enabled networking gear, such as ConSentry, with their NAC-based switches, Nevis Networks (that provides out-of-the-box policy enforcement routers) and the less-known StillSecure, which implements NAC technology in their networking equipment.

There is a huge demand in NAC-related networking products on the market, but Lockdown Networking made the mistake of focusing its entire capital and attention on the NAC technology itself, which had an important role in its collapse.

TAGS:

Cisco | Lockdown Networks | Intel | Network Access Control

SEARCH THE NEWS ARCHIVE :

Today's News | Yesterday's News | News Archive

User opinions:

Comment #1 by: Insider on 22 Mar 2008, 20:37 GMT	reply to this comment
The claim that Cisco drove Lockdown to its demise is complete BS. This is inconsistent with what all credible sources have said about the company, and there is no evidence to support such a claim other than broad assumptions and sloppy journalism. Readers, look elsewhere for your facts.

Share your opinion:

SUBMIT PROGRAM \| ADVERTISE \| GET HELP \| SEND US FEEDBACK \| RSS FEEDS \| ENTER NEWS SITE \| ENGLISH BOARD \| ROMANIAN FORUM
© 2001 - 2008 Softpedia. All rights reserved. Softpedia™ and the Softpedia™ logo are registered trademarks of SoftNews NET SRL.	Copyright Information \| Privacy Policy \| Terms of Use \| Update your software \| Archive

NEWS CATEGORIES: