Introducing RSA Via and the Dawn of Smart Identity Solutions

By: Jim Ducharme, Vice President, Engineering and Product Management at RSA

Note: This piece was originally posted to EMC's Pulse blog.

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Apr 21, 2015, 02:00 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, April 21, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

http://pulseblog.emc.com/2015/04/21/introducing-rsa-via-and-the-dawn-of-smart-identity-solutions/

Today, RSA is excited to announce a new product suite we call RSA Via. It has three main components and comes with a provocative claim: it's one of the first smart identity solutions to protect from the endpoint to the cloud.

RSA Via brings together three components of identity and access management (IAM) that have traditionally been run as separate silos, and is engineered to do so in a differentiated, connected, "smart" way:

RSA Via Lifecycle is a component that is designed to provide a consistent framework for managing users as they join, move about and leave the organization. It's no secret that most organizations struggle to keep up with the constant stream of new employees, customers and partners. The smart approach here is that RSA Via is built to automate business processes and to give unparalleled visibility to line of business owners to make key decisions on access. RSA Via is engineered to provide business requestors with a simple, intuitive user interface and a context-relevant view of user access privileges. The enhanced visibility empowers end users and managers alike. It helps give them the confidence and the tools to extend business applications beyond the four walls of the organization to new use cases. It is IT saying 'yes' to the business.

But IT doesn't give up control –to the contrary - lifecycle management is driven by IT controls that map to the organization's needs. It's an effective bulwark against rogue access, helping to ensure the rule of least privileges is actively applied and to reduce the footprint for a potential attack due to a user having too much access. With RSA Via, access can be terminated consistently and everywhere once a user leaves the organization.

RSA Via Governance helps give visibility and insight into who has access to what. With RSA Via, you gain this visibility throughout your environment and in the cloud...RSA Via is designed to enable a more secure enterprise by combining intelligence across IAM to create a single, central view of identities and data resources, as well as the policies around that data access, which can then be used to drive access-related business processes. It helps assure close adherence to policies and ties IT controls back to the business.

RSA Via Access is about connecting legitimate users to their applications, regardless of location or device or where that application resides. The smart approach here is that it relies on context, not just static rules, so it can adapt quickly to changing circumstances. Imagine not caring whether a user is accessing a cloud/SaaS/mobile app, or doing so from half way across the globe, or from a personal device. IT is free to develop a cohesive strategy of consistently enforcing strong authentication using policies that are uniformly applied and proactively enforced across external SaaS, internal Web apps, and mobile devices. This includes evaluating user attributes/roles in the identity directory as well as application risk and sensitivity and real-time network, session and device information to create flexible authentication policy for different security requirements. As a result, all resources are appropriately protected, and demands on users', time are kept to a minimum.

Best yet, it delivers easy, mobile-based convenience so users will be thanking you (imagine that!!) rather than leading a revolt against IT. Not all applications, users or situations are equal so they shouldn't be treated the same. RSA Via Access is designed to allow users to easily engage with a range of authentication methods that leverage capabilities built into their mobile device. This cloud-based access platform is compatible with the RSA SecurID two-factor authentication solution to provide a strong cloud/on-premise hybrid approach so customers can leverage their existing infrastructure.

The 'Via' in RSA Via is not an acronym… it quite literally means "the road." RSA chose this branding for its next generation IAM solution because it speaks to how we aspire to lead our customers through a revolution of how to secure the new perimeter of Identity. It takes the core elements of lifecycle, governance and access, and uses them to make intelligent decisions based on context; ties IT controls back to the business; and automates workflows. It's visibility, control, context, and convenience. With the old guard way of doing business, identity and access management has not progressed quickly enough to meet the needs of today's cloud- and mobile-oriented environment. RSA Via looks to change that. We invite you to start your own road to a smart identity solution by learning more here: RSA Via.

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SOURCE RSA