* PingID adds Auto-Connect feature to PingFederate
Safe, secure and easy to deploy – what more could you ask from a federation server? Ping Identity’s newest version of the PingFederate server (Version 5.0) promises just that. The “easy” part is Auto-Connect, a major new feature of the latest version of the industry’s first third-party federation server, that promises to significantly speed up the time it takes to establish SAML connections.
Auto-Connect automatically creates secure SAML Single Sign-on (SSO) connections in seconds, eliminating the manual tasks that previously had to be performed by administrators to configure the connections, such as the exchange of certificates and configuration data. That’s right, not only is it automatic, it’s also fast: PingFederate 5 not only can automatically establish SAML connections for secure Internet SSO, but do so in seconds vs. the weeks or months it often takes with other products.
According to Ping CTO Patrick Harding: “Our vision for Auto-Connect is to completely eliminate the need for testing individual connections. Once PingFederate 5.0 works with one Auto-Connect enabled federation partner, it will work with all Auto-Connect enabled partners.” That’s an ambitious statement, but over the years I’ve known Harding, I’ve never known him to hyperbolize.
Auto-Connect isn’t the only new feature of PingFederate 5.0, though. Among other significant improvements are:
* Enhanced clustering, which allows administrators to deploy multiple PingFederate servers in clusters across multiple data centers for increased throughput and availability;
* SNMP support, which allows administrators to monitor PingFederate with enterprise system management tools;
* New integration kits to facilitate linking PingFederate with custom PHP applications, Apache, Microsoft IIS and Microsoft SharePoint;
* An Advanced Authentication module to simplify integration with complex authentication mechanisms, as well as commercially supported PingFederate plug-ins for CardSpace and OpenID;
* Expanded certificate management capabilities including certificate expiration alerts, Certificate Revocation List (CRL) support and a streamlined GUI that further simplifies certificate administration.
All in all this is a significant upgrade to this well accepted federation server. Browse to the product page http://www.pingidentity.com/products/index.cfm for more info and to download a free trial copy. Do it now.
Events:Last week I inadvertently posted some wrong information in the events feed. Both the European Identity Conference (April 22-25) and Location Intelligence 2008 (April 28-30) are taking place in April, not March. I apologize for the error and hope you didn’t rush out and attempt to register!
