SafeNet Inc., a global leader in data protection and Xceedium Inc., the leading provider of privileged identity and access management solutions for the hybrid cloud, today announced a strategic partnership to deliver high-assurance solutions to help highly regulated commercial and government organizations manage privileged access across heterogeneous cloud architectures, including Amazon Web Services™ (AWS), VMware, and hybrid-clouds.

With the continuing evolution of the threat landscape, organizations need to apply granular access controls to ensure that critical data is secure regardless of where it resides. In addition, organizations need to maintain detailed audit trails of privileged user activities to ensure that compliance standards are maintained and data is secure, inside and outside of the organization. This is especially important for governments and other heavily regulated industries, such as financial services, retail, and healthcare, which require even higher levels of assurance for their critical systems and data, particularly as data moves to and from the cloud.

SafeNet and Xceedium have partnered to combine market-leading two-factor authentication and enterprise-class key management with granular, role-based privileged access controls to address the growing need for an end-to-end, highly scalable solution for securing data in private, hybrid and public cloud environments. Xceedium Xsuite now supports SafeNet single- and multi-domain smart cards. The integrated solution provides strong authentication of privileged users and addresses key U.S. federal government mandates including HSPD-12 and OMB M-11-11.

In addition to SafeNet’s authentication solutions, Xceedium will also integrate SafeNet’s market-leading hardware security modules, onto their Xsuite platform. SafeNet’s HSMs provide reliable protection for transactions, identities, and applications by securing cryptographic keys and provisioning encryption, decryption, authentication, and digital signing services.

As a result, Xceedium and SafeNet will enable enterprise and government organizations to store their cryptographic keys in a FIPS 140-2 Level 3-validated environment, providing high-assurance protection for their critical assets.

“Our customers face strict security and compliance directives as they look to rapidly migrate systems to the cloud,” noted Mordecai Rosen, Xceedium EVP of business development. “Our strategic partnership with SafeNet allows us to deliver a high-assurance version of Xsuite that will provide customers with the security controls and auditability necessary to move forward with their virtualization and cloud initiatives.”

Together, SafeNet’s authentication solutions and Xsuite will enable organizations to positively identify and authenticate elevated-privileged users such as systems, network, database, virtualization, and cloud administrators, before they are allowed to perform administrative functions. The combined offering not only enforces role-based access controls, but will monitor and record all privileged sessions, reducing the risk of internal threats.

“Virtualization and the cloud have created entirely new classes of privileged users and infrastructure,” commented David Etue, SafeNet vice president, corporate development strategy. “SafeNet is excited to work with Xceedium to provide customers the necessary controls to address virtualized and cloud infrastructure including privileged user management, strong authentication and encryption solutions thus enabling organizations to confidently leverage the benefits while ensuring sensitive data is adequately protected.”

SafeNet and Xceedium plan to further integrate SafeNet’s data protection solution onto the XSuite platform throughout the remainder of the year. In addition, the companies plan to jointly market these solutions as they become available, both directly and through large integration partners focused on regulated verticals.

Supporting Resources:

• Versions of Xsuite with support for SafeNet’s single- and multi-domain smartcards will be available for demonstration at AWS Booth #216 at the AWS re: Invent vendor showroom floor
• About Xsuite and Xsuite Cloud: www.xceedium.com/xsuite/xsuite-overview
• About SafeNet Data Protection Solutions: Authentication Solutions, Key Management Solutions, Data Encryption Solutions, Cloud Security Solutions.
• About SafeNet Authentication Solutions: http://www.safenet-inc.com/products/data-protection/multi-factor-authentication/
• About SafeNet Hardware Security Modules: http://www.safenet-inc.com/products/data-protection/hardware-security-modules-hsms/
• Gartner: 2012 Magic Quadrant for User Authentication
• SafeNet and Xceedium Solution Brief: http://safenet-inc.com/resources/solution-brief/data-protection/Solution_Brief_-_Safenet_and_Xceedium/
• SafeNet HSM Provisioning for the Cloud white paper: http://www.safenet-inc.com/resources/white-paper/data-protection/White_Paper_-_An_Introduction_to_Luna_Director_and_HSM_Provisioning_for_the_Cloud/

About SafeNet

Founded in 1983, SafeNet, Inc. is one of the largest information security companies in the world, and is trusted to protect the most sensitive data for market-leading organizations around the globe. SafeNet’s data-centric approach focuses on the protection of high-value information throughout its lifecycle, from the data center to the cloud. More than 25,000 customers across commercial enterprises and government agencies trust SafeNet to protect and control access to sensitive data, manage risk, ensure compliance, and secure virtual and cloud environments.

About Xceedium

Xceedium is the leading provider of privileged identity and access management solutions for hybrid-cloud enterprises. Large companies and global government agencies use Xceedium products to reduce the risks that privileged users and unprotected credentials pose to systems and data. The company’s Xsuite platform enables customers to implement a Zero Trust security model. It vaults privileged account credentials, implements role-based access control and monitors and records privileged user sessions. With unified policy management, Xsuite enables the seamless administration of security controls across systems, whether systems reside in a traditional data center, a private cloud, on a public cloud infrastructure or any combination thereof.

Xceedium solutions enable organizations to comply with security and privacy mandates such as: PCI DSS, FISMA, HIPAA and NERC CIP. The company’s products provide industry-leading reliability, availability and scalability, and are the most highly certified products in the market with designations including FIPS 140-2 Level 2, Common Criteria EAL4+, and the U.S. DoD Unified Command Approved Products List (UC/APL). For more information, visit: www.xceedium.com.