Ping Identity executives see identity as the cornerstone of access to computing and application resources inside an enterprise and in the cloud. The executives, who see securing identity as a critical endeavor, today announced the Identity Defined Security Platform, which combines updated tools in an approach to improve identity control, as a function of proactive security.
With the Identity Defined Security Platform, Ping Identity aims to re-categorize itself as a security vendor, rather than just an identity vendor, said CEO Andre Durand. “There are new features in our products, but the important thing is that people truly start connecting identity to security,” Durand told eWEEK.
In the new platform, there is an emphasis on continuous authentication for identity, Durand explained.
Durand explained that in the new platform there is an emphasis on continuous authentication in the Ping ID 1.4 strong authentication application. Additionally as part of Ping Identity’s continuous authentication efforts, the company is announcing a new Apple Watch authenticator and a partnership with two-factor authentication vendor Yubico.
The new PingAccess 3.2 release provides improved capabilities to define and enforce policy controls. Durand explained that dynamic access control goes beyond the static access control systems that are typically in use in enterprises today. What happens today is that organizations set up user accounts, and those users then get permissions to use certain apps, he said.
“Many organizations are not leveraging identity to control access,” Durand said.
The next piece of the platform is about further enabling federated single sign-on (SSO) for access to multiple applications and clouds, which is where the Ping Federate 8.0 product comes into play.
A key theme in the Identity Defined Security Platform is to provide users with a consistent user experience across Ping Identity’s applications, Durand said. Initially, there is no comprehensive dashboard that will tie all the applications together and provide an enterprise with a unified view of identity.
“We are beginning to integrate the management of the product into PingOne,” Durand said. “So the unified management across the whole stack is coming.”
PingOne is Ping Identity’s identity-as-a-service (IDaaS) solution.
Ping Identity isn’t the only vendor aiming to more closely integrate access technology with security. At the RSA Security 2015 conference, RSA announced its VIA platform, which includes new identity and access elements.
Ping Identity differentiates itself from various competitors in that its technology was born in the cloud era.
“We were born in federation,” Durand said. “How you unlock the silo of identity in an enterprise is all about federation.”
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.