In recent years, Google has released a range of services that help other companies manage employee access to apps and data. Google’s flagship product herein is the Cloud Identity, which is being expanded today with three new products and features.
In London today, Google organised the Cloud Next event. In addition, it launched new products and services that help developers think about accessing their apps. This will streamline identity management and allow developers to better manage the access rights of different users. It will also become easier for companies to take over Cloud Identity and make it work for their existing solutions.
Cloud Identity for Customers and Partners
Google’s most important announcement is probably the Cloud Identity for Customers and Partners. The software is now in beta. Whereas Cloud Identity is primarily intended for employees of large companies, this new product is aimed at developers who want to bring the software to their own application.
Cloud Identity product manager Karthik Lakshminarayanan states that developers are increasingly building applications that also deal with identity and access management. So when you build an app, you might think about usernames and passwords, or social media as an authentication mechanism.
This new service allows developers to check the identity of users in multiple ways. Think of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, but also e-mail, passwords, SAML, OIDC and other possibilities. Google takes care of the processing and offers an interface for the customers as well as the backend for the developer.
Other functions
A second function is to support traditional LDAP applications and IT services such as VPNs. This feature is a recognition of the fact that most companies cannot simply switch to a new paradigm when it comes to the security of their systems. By supporting LDAP, it is still possible for employees to access legacy apps while using Cloud Identity.
Finally, Google provides context-aware access for companies that already use the Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy. The idea is that companies can access cloud services based on the identity of the user and the context of the request. There is no need to use a VPN. For example, the location of the device that people want to access and its security are taken into account.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.