The ability of the cloud to allow businesses to rapidly achieve business agility, help reduce risk and improve compliance, and accelerate new business services has led many organizations to move applications to the cloud. This has created a hybrid enterprise made up of on-premise applications and cloud-based services – both still in need of Identity and Access Management.

And companies recognize this. According to a soon-to-be-released survey on cloud security conducted by the Ponemon Institute on behalf of CA Technologies: “Sixty-four percent of respondents say they prefer a hybrid identity & access management (IAM) solution that can support both cloud and on-premise applications.”

CA CloudMinder™, the IAM Software-as-a-service solution from CA Technologies, takes a two-pronged hybrid approach to IAM in order to secure the hybrid enterprise (or agency for those public sector readers):

• Its three components: CA CloudMinder™ SSO, CA CloudMinder™ Identity Management, and CA CloudMinder™ Advanced Authentication, deployed as a single, integrated service or as individual capabilities, secure both on-premise and cloud-based applications.
• CA CloudMinder has the ability to operate with existing on-premise CA Technologies IAM solutions – creating the ultimate in a hybrid IAM solution. This helps preserve the existing investment in IAM on the operational side while unifying IAM administration for both on-premise and cloud applications in the CA CloudMinder interface.

Hybrid IAM for the hybrid enterprise gives organizations flexibility and choice. They can start with a small project, i.e. with a customer loyalty program. They can accept visitors using their Facebook or Google login credentials to quickly create an identity in their program, and manage and protect that identity. They can also SSO to other federated sites and, if necessary, incorporate advanced authentication (e.g. two-factor) into their application should a need arise. The flexibility that the CA CloudMinder hybrid approach extends into its separate components; an organization might only start with CA CloudMinder Identity Management, then add CA CloudMinder SSO, and later, as they become comfortable with security in the cloud, CA CloudMinder Advanced Authentication.

Visit ca.com/mindyourcloud for more information.