Centrify launches IT-friendly alternative to bring your own ID

Credit: skpy via Flickr

One of the driving forces behind the emerging bring your own identity movement (commonly abbreviated as BYOI or BYOID) is the fact that many professionals today rely on a mix of technologies that includes on-premise enterprise and line of business apps, cloud services provided and managed by their employer, personal cloud services, mobile apps and the devices that run them, and traditional PCs running traditional productivity and business applications.

That means many users rely on several identities and their related login credentials to gain access to the resources and tools they need. Keeping track of those sprawling identities and credentials can be a complex and disjointed task, particularly when user naming conventions and password policies can vary widely. Centralizing around a single identity can make things significantly easier for employees and has the upside of improving security through the use of a single set of consistent policies for passwords and other account--related policies.

The BYOI concept, in which an identity and its related credentials are provided by a public service that users have already adopted in their personal life -- like Facebook, Twitter, or Google -- is one way to achieve that unified identity goal.

Google Has An Opportunity To Get Serious About Android Security
CITE Goes Live! Register for the CITE Conference & Expo, June 2-4, in San Francisco.

That approach has some drawbacks, however. It places identity management outside of the IT organization and infrastructure -- an approach that could make it hard to enforce or manage key identity features and policies like password requirements and account or device reset or unlock capabilities. As much as consumerization is causing a re-evaluation of the roles and requirements of IT and security within an organization, this may be a red line that organizations won't cross, particularly in regulated sectors like healthcare, finance, and government.

Earlier this week, Centrify unveiled an alternative option for achieving unified identity services that doesn't require organizations to cede authority.

That solution is a new product in the company's Direct Control lineup that is designed to extend enterprise identities beyond the corporate network to a range of public and private cloud services. Known as Direct Control for SaaS, it joins Centrify's Direct Control solutions for Macs, iOS and Android devices, various Unix and Linux distributions, and web apps and databases (including SAP).

Like Centrify's existing solutions, Direct Control for SaaS leverages the existing identities provided by an organization's Active Directory infrastructure without requiring administrators to extend or alter the Active Directory schema. In leveraging Active Directory, Centrify's solutions allow administrators to work directly with Active Directory management tools and group policies rather than forcing them to work in a separate console that syncs or pulls data from Active Directory. That approach, which sharply reduces the learning curve, install, and initial configuration time, streamlines identity/account management as well as the process of setting and enforcing policies. The result is a unified identity across internal and external resources that can be used for corporate-issued or personally-owned devices.