Recent Postings
What is DirectAccess and How You Can Extend it to Non-Microsoft Platforms (e.g. UNIX, Linux)
It was three years ago that Bill Gates made his last appearance at the RSA Conference and introduced the Microsoft vision of “Secure Anywhere Access in a Connected World.” It was 2 years later that part of that vision became reality with the introduction of technology in Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 called DirectAccess. In this blog post I will give an overview of DirectAccess and discuss how Centrify DirectSecure embraces and extends it to non-Microsoft platforms; i.e. even better together.
How DirectSecure Encrypts Data in Motion and Why You Need It
DirectSecure can optionally encrypt data in motion. Here are two immediate reasons why you need it.
How DirectSecure Can Help Address PCI Network Segmentation and Isolation Requirements
DirectSecure can help you meet PCI DSS requirements around network segmentation and address section 1.2 of PCI regarding restricting connections between untrusted networks.
How DirectSecure Leverages IPsec
In this blog post I will talk more about how DirectSecure works and specifically how it leverages IPsec.
Introducing Centrify DirectSecure: Cross-Platform Server Isolation
With the release of Centrify Suite 2010, we introduced two new products: DirectManage and DirectSecure. In this blog post I will discuss what DirectSecure does at a high-level and why customers need it. In later blog posts discuss how it works, give some use cases, and then discuss how it extends Windows7 DirectAccess to cross-platform environments.
Introducing Centrify DirectManage: Making the Centrify Suite Even Easier to Deploy and Manage
One common dilemma that software vendors face is when they pack more features and functions into their products, those products become more difficult to use, manage and deploy, and therefore a major upgrade can actually represent a step backwards in the customer’s eyes. The best example for me personally is Office 2007 — after a year on Office 2007 I still find I am not as productive in using this new version vs. the older version. Centrify has been very cognizant of that classic software vendor dilemma, and since day 1 we have historically invested in making our software not only functionally rich, but also easy to deploy/use/manage, as well as very non-intrusive (e.g. no AD schema mods, no painful UNIX UID rationalizing, no kernel mods, etc.). Our goal has been to NOT have our customers 'manage the management system.' The recently introduced DirectManage is another step in this vision, and in this blog post will talk about what DirectManage is and what it does.
Microsoft is pleased to partner with Centrify to help customers extend the use of Active Directory to their heterogeneous systems and applications, and now with Centrify's support for Microsoft ADFS this interoperability has been extended to Web Single Sign-on federated identity management scenarios.
Michael Stephenson
Director, Windows Server Division
Microsoft Corp.