SafeNet enhances access security to Microsoft Cloud

As more enterprises deploy cloud-based applications and services, the need to create identity federations that can unify IT services and provide secure user access has increased significantly. The integration of SAS and Microsoft AD FS offers IT organisations an easy to implement and fully automated authentication-as-a-service solution that helps provide secure user access to Office 365 applications, as well as other Microsoft client-based applications, through the identities provisioned by the IT department in Active Directory.

“Strong authentication is very important to many of our enterprise customers. It is one of the core features of the conditional access policies enabled by AD FS in Windows Server 2012 R2. Our extensible model allows partners like SafeNet to integrate their technology with AD FS, providing secure and seamless access to a wide variety of services including Office 365. We are pleased to work with SafeNet to extend the strong authentication capabilities of AD FS,” said Alex Simons, director of program management for Active Directory at Microsoft.

“There are a couple of different trends that make this a critically important integration,” said Andrew Young, vice president of product management, SafeNet. “One is the growing reliance on cloud applications of all types, not the least of which are the Office products that seemingly every business organisation depends on. The other is the ever-increasing awareness that a breach of sensitive corporate data, caused by unauthorised access, can happen at any time. SafeNet Authentication Service lets organisations mitigate this risk in a way that doesn’t disrupt business processes, lets users access resources from any type of device, and is easy to manage.”

Unlike other authentication offerings, SAS can integrate directly into AD FS with minimal configuration requirements and then be used to manage authentication for all applications they use, Microsoft or otherwise, in a completely uniform way. This allows enterprise IT administrators to secure and drastically simplify their entire authentication environment with a single back end, and realise significant cost savings as a result.

SafeNet Authentication Service delivers fully-automated, strong authentication-as-a-service with flexible token options that can be customised to meet organisations’ specific needs. It requires no physical infrastructure while protecting both cloud-based and on-premises applications, as well as networks, users, and devices. Organisations can use it to implement unified access policies and single sign-on (SSO) for web-based applications and other corporate resources, including on-premises identities.