Many of our life-science clients are adopting a “cloud-first” strategy, biasing their software selection to cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.
They are able to leverage cloud offerings including as NetSuite, Workday, Service-Now, Microsoft Office 365, Google Apps, Concur, and more. However, each of these applications typically requires a username and password.
Cloud Identity Providers (IdP) and Single-Sign-On (SSO) vendors have significantly matured over the past few years.
What to look for:
You’ll want to look at providers who have hybrid support for on-premise and cloud applications. There are now exciting services to automatically provision and de-provision your employees, integrate with Active Directory, and provide access from our iPad or iPhone.
In additional to managing identity, the solutions offer multi-factor authentication using your phone or one-time tokens, and providers use standards such as SAML 2.0 to integrate cloud applications and on-premise applications alike.
Several of the providers offer APIs and integration with Human Resources systems as well.
Getting a handle on all the cloud applications you subscribe to and ensuring employees no longer have access to applications after they leave the company is critical to compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley, CLIA, and PCI.
Scalability and Reliability of your identity solution and provider is important. Ask about service levels and transparent information about downtime.
Also expect these providers to show you evidence of their security measures and the SSAE16 SOC 2 audit report.
Some of the cloud identity players you may want to take at look at include:
Okta – http://www.okta.com
OneLogin – http://www.onelogin.com
Symplified – http://www.symplified.com
Ping Identity – http://www.pingidentity.com
