Symantec O3 Cloud Identity and Access Control

On March 14, 2012 the Symantec corporation announced the beginning of sales of the solution Symantec O3 Cloud Identity and Access Control which allows the companies to ensure safety of use of cloud services. Symantec O3 platform creates uniform access point to any cloud applicaions and services, applying three levels of protection in a cloud: access control, information security and information management.

According to data of recently conducted survey of Symantec on virtualization and transition to clouds for 2011, 44% of heads are afraid to move applications, crucial for business, to cloud environments, and 76% from them consider a security issue the main problem. Symantec O3 platform creates the new level of control for cloud environments, allowing the organizations to ensure reliable identification and information security for all cloud services and devices according to the uniform standard.

"The companies want that their employees could get advantages of use of cloud services, but at the same time aim at confidentiality and protection of important information on an input and an exit from a cloud, - Francis deSouza, the president of group of corporate products and Symantec services told. – Symantec O3 is the solution of this dilemma. Helping the companies to reach the reliable standardized identification and data protection for all cloud services and devices, Symantec O3 will increase trust to cloud computing and will accelerate distribution of cloud services for business worldwide".

Symantec O3 Cloud Identity and Access Control allows to implement the system of a uniform input (Single Sign On - SSO) for any web applications even if they do not support federal protocols. This solution uses the existing infrastructure of accounts to make authentication, supporting contextual authorization, password management and federal services. Symantec O3 Cloud Identity and Access Control is already integrated with Symantec Validation and ID Protection (VIP) service that allows the enterprises to use the existing details of VPN channels for increase in safety of access to any cloud applicaions.

"Security is constantly noted by corporate users as the pacing braking factor of implementation of cloud computing. As we do not own and we do not control infrastructure based on which cloud services work, everything grows the need for implementation such the politician of cybersecurity as combination of accounts, enciphering and access control for the users addressing to cloud to services" — Neil MacDonald, the vice president of Gartner told.

On the next stage of development Symantec is going to increase information security of cloud environments, having implemented dominant technologies for data loss prevention of Symantec of DLP and enciphering of PGP which automatically will detect, block and cipher confidential information still before it is saved in a cloud or transferred to other users. The third Symantec O3 level is information management and reduction it to compliance to requirements thanks to collecting of all cloud incidents of information security. Thereby Symantec provides full-fledged means of carrying out audit in a cloud environment and its reductions in compliance with security requirements.

Symantec O3 platform is integrated with other solutions and services. Salesforce.com and Symantec are integrated by possibilities of Symantec O3 and the Force.com platform from salesforce.com to give to customers an opportunity of use of accounts of Salesforce for secure and convenient access to all their cloud services by two-factor authentication on Salesforce and in other cloud applicaions. This solution is planned to release in the middle of 2012.

"Security issues cannot interfere with distribution of cloud services among customers as they look for new approaches for increase in effectiveness of business. Using Symantec O3 system which is already built in solutions for data processing centers of Cisco and NetApp Flexpod, customers will get powerful benefits. Flexible and effective infrastructure with the general access can be easily scaled, it provides the security management necessary for providing secure access to information and applications. Thus, Symantec joins the growing number of the organizations which use FlexPod for acceleration and simplification of transition to clouds. Cisco and NetApp aim to provide to customers the innovation, the solutions for creation of cloud infrastructure which already passed test capable to satisfy business needs both today, and in the future" — Chris Cummings, the marketing vice president of products and solutions of Netapp told.