Identity security in the cloud
August 20, 2011
There were a couple of announcements made at last month’s Catalyst conference that I meant to draw to your attention but other things got in the way. Both are relevant to enterprise cloud-based computing so I’ll talk about both today…
<aside> I’ve been told that I’ve never mentioned my Twitter account here in the newsletter. I use it to mention interesting news and opinions about IdM (unlike, say, my Facebook account). People who follow @dak3 would have known about these announcements some weeks ago. </aside>
Ping Identity (which calls itself "The Cloud Identity Security Leader") announced the release of PingFederate 6.5, with new capabilities and services, including (the company says) the first commercial cloud identity management (CIM) support for OAuth 2.0, which give businesses more effective ways to secure identities while connecting users, partners, customers and applications across cloud, mobile and social networking platforms.
The new features, according to PR maven Brian Merrill, include:
• PingFederate 6.5 is the first cloud identity management solution on the market to support cloud SSO for both Web-based (via desktop or mobile browser) and native mobile apps using standard protocols (SAML, OpenID and now OAuth 2.0).
• PingFederate 6.5 is the first cloud identity management solution on the market to support SOAP- and REST-based APIs using standards such as WS-Trust and now OAuth.
Ping also announced the release of PingFederate CloudDesktop — a new Web application that gives cloud businesses the ability to support their employees, partners or affiliates with a single point of access to all of their securely federated business applications in a customizable, branded portal that can be launched from the user’s desktop or mobile browser.
On the same day, Symplified (which calls itself "The Cloud Security Company") announced Symplified Identity Manager (SIM), which centralizes identity and user management for cloud applications and synchronizes with both on-premise and cloud identity data stores.
SIM combines policy-based provisioning with delegated and self-service administration capabilities, to automate account management for hundreds, thousands and even millions (it’s claimed) of consumer users. To meet the needs of large, midsize and small organizations, SIM supports virtually all identity repositories and technologies including Active Directory, LDAP, Google, SalesForce.com, databases and SAML.
If your organization is into cloud computing (and check with every department before saying "no" to that question) or if you’re thinking about going in that direction, then the offerings from "The Cloud Security Company" (Symplified Identity Manager) and "The Cloud Identity Security Leader" (PingFederate 6.5) are worth your time to investigate.