
Centrify Corporation, which offers a unified identity service across data center, cloud and mobile, is taking their active directory based authentication and single sign on to Apple’s Mac users. One main benefit companies will realize is a dramatic increase in security. Furthermore, natural growth is expected to increase significantly. Companies will want to simplify processes for their employees.
Cory Gearhart, director of IT for Grand Island Public Schools, stated,” With more than 10,000 students, faculty and staff across 23 facilities, we had to standardize on a unified identity approach for authentication and access rights that would enhance our security for all our public records and to ensure confidentiality for our user base. Centrify was the unique vendor that was able to meet our IT needs for centralized access management of our Mac environment while also satisfying our users by providing a single set of login credentials for any computer or device to access a range of new applications and educational resources.”
Companies of all sizes are currently looking to improve work/cost efficiencies and security while enabling their work force to be flexible and agile. The issue is that while many companies can focus primarily on efficiencies, security and compliance issues are out of their control as mentioned above. With the mobile industry booming, many employees have their own personal mobile devices. Thus, a significant amount of company data is actually located outside of the company’s network and data centers.
Centrify, however, has managed to eliminate this threat. Senior Director of Product Management for Centrify, David McNeely, indicated “Increasingly we find that knowledge workers and other end users have anywhere from two to four computing devices each as users continue to work while they are mobile. With Centrify, organizations can easily secure and manage access and authentication for all the devices users need. The bottom line is that users get single sign-on from any device to any app to help them be more productive at work, while enterprise IT centrally manages and secures all applications and devices these users need for their work.”
Current pricing for Centrify User Suite Mac Edition is $48 per user per year (up to 5 devices). Centrify User Suite Premium Edition will be $72 per user per year (up to 5 devices).