Intel announces Cloud SSO beta program

Network World - Intel today announced the availability of a cloud-based single sign-on (SSO) authentication and authorization service under a beta program that is expected to become a generally available offering later this spring.

Vikas Jain, Intel's director of product management in the software and services group, says the service has evolved out of a product called the ExpressWay CloudAccess 360 that was part of the McAfee cloud-security platform that Intel gained with its acquisition of McAfee a year ago.

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The Intel Cloud SSO is a way that enterprises can provision and de-provision users and authorize applications and services entirely through a cloud-based service. It will compete with the growing number of cloud-based SSO services from security vendors, including Symantec and Symplified.

The Intel Cloud SSO, which can support two-factor authentication, is able to automate provisioning and de-provisioning of software-as-a-service accounts, and supports about 50 SaaS applications out of the box. Jain points out that in some enterprises, IT managers may want to use both the software ExpressWay CloudAccess 360 and the Intel Cloud SSO together. They can work together to enable integration with on-premise identity repositories, such as Active Directory and LDAP, as well as client-side authentication and SSO. He said customers can apply the same license to both systems.

Ellen Messmer is senior editor at Network World, an IDG publication and website, where she covers news and technology trends related to information security.

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