Orange Business Services is planning to release a new global cloud security product later this year as the firm targets increased revenues from the sector.
The Flexible Identity offering is aimed at providing smartphone business users with a way to increase identity control amid the multiplication of cloud applications and the development of professional/personal uses.
This is a major challenge for many businesses, with around 60 percent of users needing to access resources from anywhere, at any time, on any device, according to the operator.
Flexible Identity tackles this “device sprawl” by giving users a centralised and unique authentication process to access their resources.
OBS is already a major global player for business security services, with a total of 350 security consultants and more than 100,000 users of its authentication solutions across 220 countries and territories.
In its strategic plan for 2015, FT-Orange highlighted the sector as one of eight core growth areas for the company to target.
The market is forecast to grow by more than 10 percent a year between now and 2016 and Orange’s services are expanding faster than the overall sector.
Flexible Identity is due to be released in the second half of the year.
It gives security administrators the ability to define custom profiles and access methods for individual employees, which will allow profiles to be fine-tuned to distinguish between professional and personal uses.
This will prevent data loss and implement encryption features.
Vivek Badrinath, the outgoing CEO of OBS, explained that in the face of increased and more sophisticated security threats, customers need to be constantly reminded of the risks they are taking.
“Network security lies at the core of our operator DNA, providing a robust framework to enable advanced security services able to prevent and manage risks from the network itself to the workstation,” he added.
“We support companies to analyse and manage the security of their workspace – including mobile workspace – and offer them a secured cloud environment, all of this on a global scale.”