Centrify Express for Smart Card allows employees to use their personal Mac system on the road or at home to securely access critical information

September 25, 2012

4 Min Read

PRESS RELEASE

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Sept. 25, 2012 -- Centrify Corporation, the leading provider of security and compliance solutions that centrally control, secure and audit access to cross-platform systems, mobile devices and applications, today announced availability of its free Centrify Express for Smart Card offering, enabling federal government employees and contractors with Macs to securely access web sites, virtual private networks and encrypted email using smart card authentication.

This new Mac smart card support, coupled with Centrify's smart card support for Red Hat also announced today (see accompanying press release "Centrify Delivers Smart Card Support for Red Hat Linux to Enable Secure Desktop Environment for Federal Government Employees"), extends Centrify's authentication and access management capabilities to the broadest range of desktops and smart cards in use within government and enterprise organizations. Strong authentication via smart cards and PINs provides the highest level of identity assurance for access to protected applications and sensitive information. Additionally, the simple installation and use of Centrify Express for Smart Card allows employees to use their personal Mac system on the road or at home to securely access critical information.

Supported smart cards include the Personal Identity Verification (PIV) card, the Common Access Card (CAC) and the CAC Next Generation (CAC NG) card. Centrify's support for smart cards helps government employees and contractors meet Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12) that calls for a mandatory, government-wide standard for reliable and secure forms of ID issued by the federal government to its employees and employees of federal contractors for access to federally controlled networks and facilities.

"Given the wide acceptance of Mac platforms and devices, especially as part of the growing Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend, Centrify is helping keep our government secure without impacting budgets," said Greg Cranley, director of Federal Sales at Centrify. "This new federal government PIV and military CAC solution gives users flexibility and delivers additional security by providing robust smart card authentication from their personally owned Mac OS X computers when accessing government or corporate web sites. Centrify honors the service of our military men and women, as well as the efforts of our federal employees, and we are pleased to make this offering free of charge to them. We see Centrify Express for Smart Cards making the job of accessing their networks a little bit easier while also making their networks more secure and reliable."

Centrify DirectControl Express for Smart Card is a free offering based on the same technology as the Centrify DirectControl for Mac OS X Smart Card Edition deployed today across federal, defense and first responder communities. Centrify Express products have been acquired by more than 100,000 IT professionals in the past year to secure authentication and enable single-sign on access across disparate systems and applications. Centrify Express for Smart Card provides essential capabilities for any Mac user that requires smart card authentication for their day-to-day tasks, including:

· Access to protected websites, including federal and DoD web sites (e.g. NCMI webmail, Army OWA, NKO, NROWS, etc.) requiring smart card authentication, from popular browsers including Safari, Internet Explorer and Chrome;

· Send and receive signed and encrypted S/MIME email using Apple Mail and Microsoft Outlook;

· Certificate authentication for VPN clients running on Mac OS X;

· Support for all current CAC, CAC NG, PIV and PIV-I cards; and

· Support for Snow Leopard (10.6), Lion (10.7) and Mountain Lion (10.8).

Centrify's ongoing commitment to the Federal Government market is demonstrated by its Common Criteria evaluation, as well as by its Certificate of Networthiness (CON) from the U.S. Army NETCOM. Centrify's solution is the industry's only Active Directory bridging product to have entered into the Common Criteria evaluation, and to have achieved both CON and FIPS certifications. Centrify earlier this year was accepted by the Certification Body for the Canadian Common Criteria Evaluation and Certification Scheme into its certification program. In addition, Centrify DirectControl for Mac OS X has also received the DoD Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) certification for support of Common Access Cards (CAC) Smart Cards and strong authentication.

Availability

Centrify Express for Smart Card is now available for download at http://www.centrify.com/mac/smartcard. Centrify Express for Smart Card includes free access to the Express community and online support. For more information on Centrify solutions for federal government, visit http://www.centrify.com/federal/overview.asp.

About Centrify

Centrify delivers integrated software and cloud-based solutions that centrally control, secure and audit access to cross-platform systems, mobile devices and applications by leveraging the infrastructure organizations already own -- Microsoft Active Directory. From the data center and into the cloud, more than 4,500 organizations, including 40% of the Fortune 50 and more than 60 Federal agencies, rely on Centrify's identity consolidation and privilege management solutions to reduce IT expenses, strengthen security and meet compliance requirements. For more information about Centrify and its solutions, call (408) 542-7500, or visit http://www.centrify.com/.

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