Centrify Expands Its Leading, Free Active Directory Integration Solution To Include Cloud Server Support And Splunk Integration

Centrify Corporation, the leading provider of security and compliance solutions that centrally control, secure and audit cross-platform systems and applications using Active Directory, today at the Red Hat Summit announced Centrify Express 2011, a major new version of its suite of free cross-platform single sign-on and authentication solutions. Centrify Express 2011 is the first free Active Directory Bridge solution to enable automated security for Linux cloud servers and to report identity and privilege management data to Splunk, a leading Operational Intelligence solution. The new solution is being unveiled and demonstrated at the Red Hat Summit this week in Centrify's booth number 1107.

With these two new capabilities, Centrify Express now comprises five distinct solutions uniquely spanning both on-premise and cloud-based systems. In addition, Centrify Express adds nine new Linux platforms and the ability to administer and manage local Linux/UNIX accounts. With the new capabilities of Centrify Express 2011, IT administrators can now rapidly launch and secure Linux servers in the cloud and obtain the operational visibility that enables them to meet their security and compliance requirements.

Centrify Express is a comprehensive suite of five, free Active Directory-based integration solutions providing authentication, single sign-on, remote access, file-sharing, and reporting for cross-platform systems deployed on premise or in the cloud. Compared to other free offerings, Centrify Express includes significantly more tools for quickly and easily integrating UNIX, Linux and Mac systems into a Windows environment and offers more advanced enterprise features to upgrade to. Centrify Express comprises: DirectControl Express for Active Directory-based authentication and single sign-on; DirectManage Express for centrally discovering and managing non-Windows systems, deploying Centrify software, and administering local Linux accounts; Centrify-enabled versions of OpenSSH, PuTTY and Samba for optimized remote access and file sharing leveraging Active Directory; Centrify Insight, a Splunk-based application for integrating identity and access management (IAM) with security information and event management (SIEM), as well as providing operational intelligence regarding cross-platform systems; and Centrify Cloud Tools for securing Linux systems deployed in the cloud.

"Organizations can benefit from bridging their systems and applications to Active Directory, be they on-premises or in the cloud," said Mark Diodati, vice president of research, Gartner. "Active Directory is the epicenter of user and system management for many enterprises, and it makes sense to leverage it as much as possible for cost reduction, improved user experience, and a better compliance posture."
About the New Centrify Express 2011: NEW: Centrify Cloud Tools Centrify is now delivering free software tools and guidance to help protect and secure cloud-based systems at launch time and to administer the security from Active Directory. Using Centrify Cloud Tools, IT managers can pre-configure cloud servers using Amazon AMI or RightScale ServerTemplates to dynamically apply authentication and access control policies to Linux cloud systems. At launch time, these servers can automatically join an Active Directory domain, configure and protect the root account, and ensure that a cloud server is as secure from unauthorized access as those in the data center. These capabilities include best practices documentation designed to help organizations adopt cloud computing more rapidly while mitigating the associated security risks. In addition, DirectManage Express has also been enhanced to support the cloud, enabling administrators to automatically discover their Linux systems that are deployed in the cloud and to seamlessly distribute the appropriate Centrify Express software to those cloud-based servers. For more information about Centrify Cloud Tools, see related press release issued today: "Centrify Introduces CloudTools for Active Directory-Based Access Control for Securing Linux Servers in the Cloud."

NEW: Centrify Insight. For users of Centrify Express and customers of the Centrify Suite, Centrify Insight collects identity, access and authorization data about UNIX and Linux servers that Centrify stores in Active Directory. In addition, access control metrics such as those detailing failed login attempts and alerts about particular privileged user behaviors give IT administrators a view of cross-platform identity, authentication and authorization in real-time. The application works with either Splunk's free or licensed version and Centrify's free or license editions. For more information see today's companion press release: "Centrify and Splunk Partner to Integrate Identity and Privilege Management to Create Operational Intelligence."NEW VERSION: DirectManage Express. The new version of DirectManage automates the discovery of systems, assesses their readiness, and streamlines the deployment of Centrify software on target systems for easy integration with Active Directory. For organizations deploying and managing dozens, hundreds, or thousands of servers, this automated deployment and upgrade feature saves an enormous effort. DirectManage now enables administrators to centrally manage local accounts and groups on Linux, UNIX and Mac systems whether or not those systems have been joined to Active Directory. Administrators can also create, edit or delete local accounts and groups on a single system or a group of systems. For example, an IT manager could use the DirectManage Deployment Manager to change the root password on a group of systems in a single step. And with its enhanced cloud support, DirectManage Express is now a centralized management point for support of both on-premise and cloud-based systems.

NEW VERSION: DirectControl Express. With the addition of nine new platforms, DirectControl Express now joins even more UNIX, Linux and Mac systems to Active Directory and gives users multi-platform single sign-on. Automated Active Directory join capabilities have also been added to DirectControl Express to enable deployment of DirectControl Express to the cloud.

NEW VERSION: Centrify-Enabled Open Source Tools. Centrify has updated some of its pre-configured versions of OpenSSH, PuTTY and Samba for painless remote access and file-sharing in an Active Directory environment. For example, Centrify has upgraded its support for OpenSSH by delivering a version based on OpenSSH Version 5.6p1. Centrify-enabled OpenSSH guarantees support for GSS Key Exchange on all platforms in order to establish trust between hosts (a feature which is not part of the standard OpenSSH distribution) and allows users to have the most current and consistent version of OpenSSH across their various deployed Linux platforms. Customers should note that both Centrify Express and the Centrify Suite also fully support the use of SSH provided by operating system vendors, as well as a number of commercial SSH solutions. Centrify simply delivers Centrify-enabled OpenSSH as an install option and convenience, and not a requirement, thereby uniquely giving users more choice in how they want to remotely access their distributed systems than any other Active Directory integration solution.

"Centrify is delivering the industry's broadest set of free capabilities to secure and manage on-premise and cloud-based systems leveraging an infrastructure they already own--Active Directory," said Frank Cabri, vice president of marketing for Centrify. "This enterprise-out approach we are taking gives IT administrators the comfort that they can leverage existing Active Directory tools and skill sets to secure their cross-platform systems regardless of where they are deployed, while at the same time providing them operational intelligence and centralized deployment and management."

Centrify Express 2011 is free, available now and can be downloaded at Centrify Express Download. Centrify Express is a subset of the capabilities provided by the Centrify Suite 2011 that layers on additional capabilities such as role-based access control, privileged identity management, Group Policy, user-level auditing, server isolation and encryption of data-in-motion. All of the capabilities described for Centrify Express 2011 also accrue to Centrify Suite 2011. Centrify Express customers can simply use Express for free or subsequently upgrade some or all of their non-Microsoft systems to the editions of the Centrify Suite that meets their needs.Centrify delivers integrated software solutions that centrally control, secure and audit access to cross-platform systems and applications by leveraging the infrastructure organizations already own--Microsoft Active Directory. From the data center and into the cloud more than 3000 organizations, including 40 percent of the Fortune 50, rely on Centrify's identity consolidation and privilege management solutions to reduce IT expenses, strengthen security and meet compliance requirements. For more information about Centrify and its solutions, call +1 (408) 542-7500 or visit http://www.centrify.com.