Cloud computing drives Asia-Pacific "certified as service" business development

At present, the growing network of transactions and the wide application of cloud computing, coupled with the pressure of enterprise costs, so that companies in the Asia-Pacific region began to try the "certification as a service" structure. But many companies still have a lot of concerns about this model.

Industry insiders said that the growth of cloud computing in the Asia-Pacific region and the cost-saving requirements of enterprises will promote the development of certification management services, but there are some hidden dangers in service reliability and user Company control.

ZDNet Asia reporter recently emailed the IDC Asia-Pacific senior software market analyst Naveen Hegde, he said, in the new technologies such as cloud computing technology environment, the company's growing security awareness and access control security requirements growth, Makes authentication a fairly important part of the security component.

Frost & Sullivan Asia-Pacific ICT researcher Alizashima also agrees with this view. He argues that the adoption of cloud computing by companies in the Asia-Pacific region has increased, boosting demand for certification as a service (AaaS). Many companies, he says, are aware of the need to equip their businesses with a strong certification system, but at the same time they do not want to spend too much money on them. In order to establish a complete certification system within the enterprise, it is necessary to spend huge sums of money and devote a lot of manpower and time.

Therefore, Shima said: "In the current economic environment, the choice of a managed certification solution can help enterprises reduce operating costs (POEX) and total cost of ownership (TCO). He also said that many enterprises actually do not have qualified technicians can assume the ability to establish an enterprise internal certification system.

The power of government and banking

Shima says banks and government agencies are the largest custodian of certified service clients. followed by retailers, manufacturers and service providers, all of whom are AAAS's main customers.

The CEO Tan Teik Guan of the Data security Bae FX (DSSS) quotes the government of Singapore Singpass as an example of the use of managed authentication services by the enterprise. Singpass for each Singaporean citizen and Enterprise to develop an ID number and password, through this ID number and password for the government electronic office-related business, management is Singapore's Local IT company Crimsonlogic. As a national strategy, Singapore is also implementing the National Certification Framework (NAF), a nationwide, powerful certification service platform for Online services, he added. Dsss was awarded a five-year contract for the design, construction, operation and management of the NAF architecture.

The use of outsourced certification services in the financial sector is not news, Tan said, but we didn't know it before. MasterCard and Visa have been using certification services to authenticate online cards and ATM transactions for several years before.

Airways EADS (BT) last month also released a new hosted certification service for financial institutions that uses hardware or software to create a one-time password for authentication between BT's customers and their consumers. Peter Gunning, manager of BT Security, told V3.co.uk that the service could also be used in related financial areas, such as insurance and retailing.

But IDC's Hegde points out that "highly sensitive industries", such as finance and finance, are best to choose traditional, independent certification products.

Sandeeplal, director of E-commerce and consumer finance at DBS Bank in Singapore, told reporters at ZDNet Asia that the bank had already booked managed certification services, and their security concerns focused on confidentiality of customer information, system security, and reliability of services. "If the service provider passes all critical issues and has a good traceable security record, we will move the data over," he said. ”

DBS also added that since suppliers are more likely to be targeted by hackers, hosting services are also facing "increased risk" issues. The DSS Tan agrees. "In some ways, the more successful the certification services provider, the more likely it is that his certification services will be ' unsafe '," he said. ”

Frost & Sullivan's Shima also said that lack of control over certification services was a major problem. For example, once a service provider suddenly collapses, the enterprise will not be able to take over the certification service or know how to authenticate the customer.

In addition, IDC's Hegde still believe that the asss market is not very mature now, the demand for certification trusteeship is not strong. He said hosting certification services would continue to evolve over time and continue to work as part of a multi-level security platform.

In the certification services provider, Tan believes that large social networking companies or content providers, such as Google and Facebook, may be better suited to provide AAAS services around the world, as their own customers are already quite large, and also using technologies such as OpenID and OAuth. But it will take a long time for most companies to accept the new concept of "certification as service".

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)