Ping Identity Rolls Out PingFederate 6.3

PRESS RELEASE

DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ping Identity, the leader in Internet Identity Security, today announced the latest release of its flagship Internet Single Sign-On offering. PingFederate 6.3 allows businesses to extend visibility and control into Internet-based applications for security, audit reporting and compliance in the Cloud. In addition, PingFederate 6.3 provides increased interoperability with Microsoft environments to enhance and extend Internet Identity Security and seamless Single Sign-On access across local network resources and Cloud services.

“Our customers rely on the ArcSight platform to protect their enterprises from threats and risks, and they are increasingly linking their networks to the Cloud”

“PingFederate 6.3’s extended logging capabilities and enhanced interoperability with Microsoft responds to growing requirements for greater visibility in the Cloud and improved interoperability across platforms,” said Ping Identity CTO Patrick Harding. “Companies must be able to successfully mix existing infrastructure and applications with Internet-based services and platforms. And they must continue to deliver on security and compliance requirements even when access points cross into the Cloud. PingFederate 6.3 helps them do this.”

Visibility and Control in the Cloud via Integration with ArcSight

Working with the ArcSight Enterprise Threat and Risk Management (ETRM) Platform, PingFederate 6.3 extends critical cybersecurity and compliance monitoring capabilities to Cloud-based applications. PingFederate allows customers to send logging data into the ArcSight platform so that enterprise IT and security organizations can correlate usage reports and track when users are accessing unauthorized applications, violating role limitations, or creating undue business risk. ArcSight solutions can then produce complete activity reports that cross internal and Cloud-based systems, making audits faster, easier and less costly.

“Our customers rely on the ArcSight platform to protect their enterprises from threats and risks, and they are increasingly linking their networks to the Cloud,” said Rick Caccia, vice president of Product Marketing at ArcSight. “By linking the ArcSight ETRM Platform with PingFederate, customers can better understand what their users are doing, whether inside the enterprise or in the Cloud. The result is better visibility and protection.”

“Cloud services used to be beyond the reach of our logging and monitoring,” said Larry Sampas, a senior security engineer for the Corporate Executive Board, which is using ArcSight Logger and a beta version of PingFederate 6.3 in development testing. “Having PingFederate logs interoperate with ArcSight is great. Now I use a simple interface to see everyone that has logged into anything connected to Ping,” he said.

PingFederate 6.3 also provides the option to write audit and server logs to Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL databases, allowing organizations to create compliance-related reports on who is accessing which Cloud-based applications, when and where.

Interoperability with Microsoft Claims Aware Development Environments

Existing Ping Identity customers who want to use PingFederate with Microsoft’s latest claims aware developer tools (Windows Identity Foundation and Visual Studio 2010) or Microsoft shops who want to extend their use of these tools across advanced federation use cases now have those options with PingFederate 6.3.

“Ping Identity and Microsoft are taking quantum leaps in terms of market foresight and in how they are leveraging partnerships,” said IDC Analyst Sally Hudson. “These efforts map perfectly to the hybrid Cloud models we see most organizations adopting. Users gain the benefits of Microsoft’s latest development tools without having to significantly alter plans for their efforts in the Cloud.”

Advancements in PingFederate 6.3 make it easily interoperable with Active Directory Federation Services 2.0 and Windows Identity Foundation regardless of use case. This allows Microsoft shops to leverage existing PingFederate deployments for use with claims aware applications, providing a centralized security token service for heterogeneous environments without compromising Internet Single Sign-On or user account management capabilities.

Certified Interoperable with Microsoft SharePoint 2010

PingFederate 6.3 has been successfully tested to interoperate with SharePoint 2010 using the WS-Federation protocol. As a result, organizations that are using SharePoint 2010 to collaborate with their business partners now have an easy way to SSO-enable them, eliminating the need to manage their partners’ identities. New capabilities in SharePoint 2010 make it “claims aware” and thus able to natively support SSO transactions. PingFederate enables the business partner, sending the user’s identity and attributes to the SharePoint-based partner portal and enabling secure Single Sign-On access.

How to Upgrade/How to Buy

PingFederate 6.3 is available now for download and is available to PingFederate customers with active maintenance agreements at no charge. Contact your designated account representative or [email protected] (+1.877.898.2905 or +1.303.468.2882) for more information.