Unified identity federation for cloud applications

SafeNet announced that its SafeWord 2008 strong authentication management platform, along with SafeNet Authentication Manager (SAM), now provides a seamless and extensible strong authentication and SSO experience for customers accessing SaaS-based applications.

By federating an enterprise user identity via Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), the authentication management platforms now enable organizations to leverage existing infrastructure, and allow users to have the same login credentials for both on-premise and cloud-based applications.

Administrators no longer need to manage several sets of entitlements or credentials for disparate systems and applications, which also improves the process of attestation for both regulatory and internal policy compliance.

Many organizations are relying on SaaS applications for core functions of their businesses. Nowhere is this more apparent than in online CRM applications like Salesforce.com’s Sales Cloud.

In fact, online CRM applications often hold the most valuable data in the company: pipeline information, customer data, and documentation that contains intellectual property. Yet often, a simple username and password combination is all that stands between an attacker and an online gold mine.

SafeNet’s authentication solutions can now be configured to protect the front door of Salesforce, Google Apps, and other software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.

“As organizations start to widely adopt SaaS applications, they are looking for ways to leverage the operational efficiencies and scalability that the cloud brings, while still ensuring the security of their virtual assets. SafeNet now enables customers to easily and pragmatically extend their security strategies to include the cloud, without any changes to authentication platform or infrastructure,” said Andrew Young, vice president, product management at SafeNet.