Ping Rolls Out Cloud Identity Connectors For LinkedIn, Twitter And Microsoft Live

DENVER, Colo. — May 25, 2011 — Ping Identity', the leader in Cloud Identity Security, today announced the release of PingFederate' Cloud Identity Connectors for LinkedIn, Twitter, and Microsoft Live, enabling enterprise organizations to rely on cloud services providers and social networking sites for third-party user authentication. Ping Identity can now connect cloud businesses with six of the largest cloud service and social network sites, including Google (and other OpenID 2.0 providers), Salesforce and Facebook.

“The registration process is a source of frustration for consumers online – they are just as likely to leave a site as they are to spend the time to create a new identity profile. To increase registration and purchase rates, online businesses need to make access easier, without compromising security,” said Roger Oberg, Vice President of Marketing for Ping Identity. “PingFederate Cloud Identity Connectors provide our customers with ways to simply and securely authenticate their users into their Web properties by leveraging LinkedIn and other popular social networking services.”

A recent survey by Blue Research found that cloud identity barriers have a significant impact on online business, with 75 percent of online shoppers stating they may leave or not use a site that requires registration. The survey also found that 45 percent of respondents would rather leave a website if they forget password or login information, instead of re-setting passwords*. The Ping Identity Cloud Identity Connectors avoid consumer registration pain-points by using the identity profiles of the most widely used social networks on the Internet.

“Giving our customers the option to let their users access their purpose-built Fuz1on portal with social network credentials makes it even easier to access the work apps they need anytime, anywhere,” said Fred Brown, EVP of SaaS social business solutions provider Fuz1on. “Ping Identity’s expanding list of Connectors provides even more choices for our customers, ensuring user adoption and usage, as well as increased customer satisfaction.”

How PingFederate Cloud Identity Connectors Work

The LinkedIn, Twitter, and Microsoft Live Cloud Identity Connectors enable any of these social networking sites to be used for third party authentication. Users visiting an e-business site can sign-on and register using an existing consumer identity. This significantly improves registration rates by eliminating the need to develop a new profile and create another password, while providing a more personalized user experience.

Installed as an add on to PingFederate, the identity connectors use configuration information from PingFederate to create the HTML and javascript code necessary to develop compelling log-in pages featuring the logos of the top social networking websites. The Cloud Identity Connectors interface with the LinkedIn, Twitter, and Microsoft Live APIs utilizing OAuth for consent/authorization and authentication. The access token obtained during this interaction can be used to authenticate subsequent API calls in order to gather additional data about the user or push information to the application.

For more information, visit the Cloud Identity Connectors page on our website.

About Ping Identity | The Cloud Identity Security Leader

Ping Identity provides cloud identity security solutions to more than 600 of the world's largest companies, government organizations and cloud businesses. With a 98% customer satisfaction rating, Ping Identity empowers more than 40 of the Fortune 100 to secure tens of millions of employees, customers, consumers and partners using secure, open, standards like SAML, OpenID and OAuth. Businesses that depend on the Cloud, rely on Ping Identity to deliver simple, proven, and secure cloud identity management for cloud single sign-on, mobile app identity security, API security, centralized IT control of cloud access, and customer and employee identity and access management. Visit www.pingidentity.com for more information.