McAfee recently announced the addition of identity and access management solutions to its Security Connected portfolio. The additions include Cloud Single Sign On and One Time Password, which according to McAfee were previously developed and sold by Intel.
Along with the two solutions, the company has also announced a new McAfee Identity Center of Expertise, staffed with experts in identity and cloud security to assist users with questions pertaining to identity and access management issues, such as architecture requirements and best practices.
As businesses embrace cloud-based applications they quickly find their IT department and application administrators are overwhelmed with the problem of managing cloud-based application accounts. Many organizations are trying to use legacy identity and authentication solutions which can create security gaps and are often complicated to deploy and customize for new applications. McAfee’s new solutions are aimed at addressing this problem.
The McAfee One Time Password is a scalable multi-factor authentication solution designed to deliver a one-time password (OTP) to any mobile device or PC, while Cloud Single Sign On will deliver single sign-on (SSO) for hundreds of cloud-based applications.
Cloud Single Sign On is available in two form factors; On-Premise Edition – application platform which can be deployed on any compatible Windows or Linux server platform, or virtual machine and SaaS Edition – cloud-based version available as a service hosted and supported by McAfee.
According to McAfee, customers will have the flexibility to purchase Cloud Single Sign On licenses and apply them to either the On-Premise Edition or SaaS Edition, or in a mixed hybrid configuration.
The solution is said to include hundreds of pre-configured Cloud Identity connectors, automated account provisioning and de-provisioning, integration with key enterprise identity repositories, built-in multi-factor authentication based on the McAfee One Time Password product, a management console with monitoring, audit and reporting tools, as well as maintenance, upgrades and 24×7 support.
While with One Time Password, customers can choose to deliver multi-factor authentication via a smart phone, mobile phone (via SMS text message), a PC client application, email, instant message/chat, or a third-party token.
“There is a huge shift underway to extend enterprise-class security to cloud-based applications and services while also consolidating security onto just a few key platforms,” said Pat Calhoun, senior vice president and general manager of Network Security at McAfee. “McAfee is not trying to ‘boil the ocean,’ instead we are focusing on several identity-related ‘hot spots’ and investing to help our customers and partners solve critical challenges and maintain business continuity and agility.”