Securing data with Authentication as a Service in the cloud, mobile era

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Incidents of international cyberespionage, attacks on financial institutions and intellectual property thefts help maintain a steady stream of news about information security. Passwords and logins are not the raw material of headline grabbing stories, but they are the security issues IT professionals must face daily. The rise in adoption of cloud computing, Software as a Service (SaaS) and mobile computing has increased the complexity of managing users and their identities.

Security practitioners have spent decades developing methods for strong authentication to mitigate these risks that are easy to use and as secure as possible. Single sign-on (SSO) systems allow users to authenticate to a central application one time and then automatically authenticate to other applications and systems.

Fortunately, SSO services for the cloud, known as Authentication as a Service (AaaS), deliver some of the benefits of SaaS to authentication management. Businesses, governments and other organizations adopt AaaS for a number of reasons, including expanded user bases as well as budgetary and time concerns.

The scope of users has expanded beyond organizational boundaries; customers, suppliers, contractors and other people outside the organizations now have access to enterprise Web applications. Provisioning and managing access for these users cannot always be linked to an internal directory or a human resources process.

Authentication and identity management systems can be complex and costly, but AaaS brings the cost benefits of SaaS to authentication. Keeping up with advances in authentication, managing two-factor authentication and incorporating mobile devices can also be time-consuming. Shifting these burdens to a service provider is an appealing option. Continue reading..

by

Dan Sullivan, Contributor

This article are taken from http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com