The ASA-X series has come out with a steady stream of new features over the last few months. One thing that is coming out that hasn’t been announced at the time of this writing is the ASA 9.x ASA OS. What are some of the features that will be in the new ASA 9x code? Glad you asked.

It is planned that the ASA 9 OS will bring together the two lines of ASA that are currently diverged. At this time the older standard ASAs and the new higher powered ASA-X series have different code bases. While the look, feel and features should be similar there are some software differences that are minor. The version 9 of the ASA OS will bring these two ASA lines back to the same code base.

Change of Authorization or CoA is one feature that is very key to the implementation of some of the new security technologies that Cisco has recently come out with. This feature should be in the version 9 of the ASA OS. The feature essentially allows an end device that is authenticated to be moved, once authenticated, to another security container such as a different VLAN once they have authenticated to the network with something like 802.1x.

Until next time,
TechStop (JW)