Juniper Networks announced that the company has acquired WiteSand, a startup that provides cloud-native zero trust Network Access Control (NAC) solutions. This deal brings a highly experienced engineering team and exceptional technology to Juniper,
accelerating the company’s ongoing efforts to deliver a next-generation NAC solution as a key element of their award-winning AI-driven enterprise portfolio.

NAC plays a vital role in many IT environments by identifying which devices can securely connect to a network. But traditional NAC solutions, which leverage on-premises hardware built using monolithic code bases, are often complex to deploy and operate, and can be cost prohibitive to scale. These limitations can be solved by moving NAC operations to the cloud, and leveraging AIOps for automated provisioning, monitoring, analysis and security.

“Both WiteSand and Juniper share a common vision of disrupting the antiquated NAC space with cloud agility and AI-driven intelligence,” said Sujai Hajela, EVP AI-Driven Enterprise, Juniper Networks. “Their premier NAC technology and renowned engineering team are the perfect complement to Juniper’s AI-driven enterprise portfolio, which was recently distinguished as a Leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure with furthest scores for both ability to execute and completeness of vision. When NAC is integrated with wireless assurance, wired assurance, WAN assurance, IoT assurance, and indoor location services under a common Mist cloud and AI umbrella, Juniper customers can deliver amazing experiences to their network users, from the client all the way to the cloud.”