Centrify Suite delivers “enterprise-out” centralized cloud server control using Microsoft Active Directory
Centrify today announced enhancements to its Centrify Suite software that enable organizations to dynamically secure Linux-based cloud servers using their existing Active Directory infrastructure. The Centrify Suite can leverage policy logic residing with Microsoft AD, such as role definition expressed through group membership and entitlements, to manage access control to off-premises services and infrastructure.
According to Centrify this “enterprise-out” approach to access control centralizes the administration of security policies, ensures consistent enforcement of security policies across hosted systems, and helps make all cloud-based servers, whether private or hosted, as secure and compliant with regulations as those in the data center, regardless of operating system.
The new offering also monitors and provides auditable information on all user activity via scheduled and customized reporting options, and enables enterprise single sign-on (SSO) to the operating system and applications.
To enable these capabilities, Centrify makes use of the VMware vCloud and/or Amazon EC2 APIs to discover servers in the cloud. The Centrify software then analyzes the readiness of the servers to be joined to Active Directory, downloads the appropriate software, joins the systems to the customer’s Active Directory domain, and provisions privileged users according to the customer’s established policies. Additionally, Centrify takes advantage of “Cloud templates” that define the configuration and deployment of servers so that organizations can easily enforce standards on new systems as they are provisioned.
“The ability to dynamically provision servers requires at the same time the ability to dynamically secure them,” said Frank Cabri, vice president of marketing at Centrify. “By securing and managing all of their servers within Active Directory, IT organizations can leverage their Active Directory investment to ensure that policies are uniformly applied wherever they are needed.”