Credexo
Simplifying.Protecting.Enabling Azure

Credexo draws its lineage from the Enterprise Security Services division of the Oil & Gas giant, Schlumberger. As Schlumberger Alumni, the core team at Credexo has spring-boarded off the success they have had securing sensitive Exploration & Production information for Oil & Gas customers. Credexo was formed to capitalize on the vast expertise and experience gathered during this exciting journey solving enterprise security problems for a vertical thatcan be as remote as a floating Oil Rig in the remote parts of the Indian Ocean.

Jameel Syed, Founder & CEO, Credexo, recalls, “The timing of Credexo’s formation was just right. Microsoft was ramping up its enterprise solution stack. Our partnership with Microsoft enabled us to combine our depth of expertise with their breadth of products to offer tried, tested & mature solutions across other verticals.” This partnership has grown over the years to Credexo being recognized as the finalist for the Microsoft 2014 partner of the year.

Microsoft’s new strategy of “Mobile First, Cloud First” approach brings us at a new intersection of users, devices and hybrid IT infrastructure that organizations need to secure to stay complaint with regulations and to stay competitive. As an Azure Circle Partner, C r e d e x o enables customers adopt this change in paradigm by harnessing the power of Azure and its rich platform to facilitate a federated and collaborative environment. Such an environment becomes a business enabler for their corporate employees,vendors, business partners, suppliers and other external identities so they can collaborate beyond their corporate boundaries.

Access Management to Business Applications

A typical use case is when a corporate employee collaborates with a customer— to have a meaningful collaboration, both the parties will need sufficient access to the system that orchestrates this collaboration. “Our latest solution offering centralized Application and Entitlement Solution built using Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager and Azure Active Directory, delivers a unique security model for business applications that enable a hybrid identity where some users (external users) are hosted in Azure while others (corporate users) continue to be on-premise”, explains Syed.

The rich set of capabilities built on the strengths of Microsoft’s Identity Stack enables a policy based assignment of entitlements to users supporting mechanisms such as self-service request based, security manager based or automatic criteria based entitlements.

Stronger Authentication to Business Applications

For organizations that have a need to enforce stronger authentication to critical business applications, Credexo offers solutions that help stretch their Azure investments by eliminating other infrastructure costs. For a second level of authentication, traditionally customers use tokens from RSA—a company that provides one time password hard tokens. These tokens are expensive and RSA’s proprietary algorithm also restricts movement to an alternative vendor. “We replace these tokens with a cost-effective alternative—the Microsoft’s Azure Multi- Factor authentication (MFA) service for both on-premise and cloud security. Azure’s MFA provides the same level of assurance through the use of mobile app, phone call or text message instead of an RSA token. For customers, who have a strong desire to retain a similar form factor, Credexo offers a wide variety of OATH based hard tokens at a fraction of the cost of RSA tokens.

Securing Data in Transit: Digital Rights Management

Organizations today face a critical problem enforcing security policies post-distribution. Credexo helps organizations protect their information assets by leveraging the rich policy based Data Loss Prevention measures offered by Azure’s Rights Management Services. We offer process and technical solutions that enable organizations maintain control over this process while taking advantage of the elastic nature of Azure’s cloud platform.

Syed is undeterred in his strong desire to help customers adopt Azure by migrate their authentication and authorization workloads,to significantly reduce their IT costs. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing the long term benefits that Cloud has to offer that easily overshadows the short term change management such as adoption demands. “At Credexo, we are identifying the gaps or opportunities, to constantly innovate and ramp up our portfolio of solutions leveraging a great platform like Azure,” concludes Syed.