The University of Washington will be giving feedback to Microsoft on two identity federation options the company is planning to introduce as part of its cloud services. The initiative is intended to help institutions collaborate securely with external partners. The university will also be one of the first to roll out a federated identity solution with Microsoft on Live@edu.

Key Pair Technologies announced a family of products designed to address the need for increasingly tighter and more integrated security solutions to support building and operating public and private clouds. Each product in the family is optimized to address the differing needs of customers who are planning to leverage cloud computing to achieve their business objectives.  

Key Pair unveils the following products to address the security gaps and challenges in migrating to a cloud environment:

LiveTime Software, provider of Web based ITIL 3 Service Management and Help Desk software, today announced support for SAML/SAML2 based Single Sign-On (SSO) in the upcoming 6.1 release of LiveTime Service Manager and Help Desk. With the addition of support for SAML, LiveTime now leverages existing investments in infrastructure deployed for Single Sign-On to validate user credentials, and streamline access to LiveTime Service Manager and Help Desk.

Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud service will become the preferred platform for Intuit App Center, a marketplace of small-business applications and services launched in October 2009. The two companies are aiming to let their respective developers and channels build and sell those applications to small and mid-sized businesses...As part of the agreement, Microsoft made the beta of a Windows Azure SDK for the Intuit Partner Platform available for download. The SDK includes a SAML gateway that provides the single sign-on, said Jamin Spitzer, director of platform

Michael Cobb writes: You've successfully migrated your organization's selected applications and data into the cloud, and everyone has said what a great job you've done. But you and I both know the task of maintaining the security of these apps and data has only just begun. In this tip, I'll review which technologies and processes must be initiated, monitored and secured after a cloud computing implementation or initiative is up and running.