Google this week announced the general availability of secure LDAP, after introducing the capability in October at Next ’18 London.
Allowing customers to manage access to traditional LDAP-based apps and IT infrastructure, it can be used with either G Suite or Cloud Identity, Google’s managed identity and access management (IAM) platform.
Secure LDAP, the Internet search giant explains, supports management of access to both software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps and traditional LDAP-based apps/infrastructure, regardless of whether on-premises or in the cloud, via a single IAM platform.
Secure LDAP enables authentication, authorization, and user/group lookups and, because the same user directory is used for both SaaS and LDAP apps, logging into services like G Suite and other SaaS apps is similar to that for traditional applications.
“Applications and IT infrastructure that use LDAP can be simply configured to leverage Cloud Identity’s secure LDAP service instead of an existing legacy identity system—end users don’t have to change how they access their apps,” Google explains.
Furthermore, management of applications and users is now available in a single place, which decreases complexity and cost, reduces the dependency on legacy identity infrastructure, and improves security, Google claims.
Google says that virtually any app that supports LDAP over SSL can work with secure LDAP. Google is currently working with various companies to validate their apps, including Aruba Networks (HPE), Atlassian, itopia, JAMF, Jenkins (Cloudbees), OpenVPN, Papercut, pfSense (Netgate), Puppet, Softerra, Sophos, Splunk, and Synology.
Secure LDAP is already being rolled out to customers using Cloud Identity Premium, G Suite Enterprise, G Suite for Education, and G Suite Enterprise for Education, and should become visible for all of them within a couple of weeks.
Google has already published documentation on how to get started with using secure LDAP. A free 14-day trial is available on the Cloud Identity website.
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