Novell has announced the general availability of Novell Cloud Security Service. Part of Novell's WorkloadIQ vision, Novell Cloud Security Service gives cloud providers the ability to deliver secure access and compliance in the cloud for their customers. Novell Cloud Security Service is a critical part of Novell's broader identity and security portfolio, which enables enterprises to have a consistent framework for managing identities across physical, virtual and cloud deployments.

With Novell Cloud Security Service, enterprises can quickly and easily extend their identity infrastructure to any public cloud. Any changes that are made to their users or permissions are immediately replicated in the cloud environment, thus ensuring one consistent identity and security framework for the enterprise, regardless of where the computing is actually taking place.

"Novell's ability to deliver a complete set of provisioning, access, security and compliance solutions that help both organizations and cloud providers control access, monitor activity and provide compliance is yet another example of their leadership in this area," said Jim Reavis, co-founder and executive director of the Cloud Security Alliance. "The Cloud Security Alliance is working closely with Novell to address many of the trust concerns end-user organizations have with cloud computing, including issues that go beyond just technology solutions."

Novell Cloud Security Service is hosted in the cloud, either where the provider hosts its application or via a Novell hosting partner. A user can log on directly or via the enterprise identity system. The service first verifies the identity and, if successful, will generate an identity token in the format needed by the SaaS provider. The user is now authenticated to the SaaS service. Once inside the application, the application connectors that are provided with the service capture deep page-level user activity and provide the audit stream for compliance purposes.

As cloud models mature and businesses look at cloud solutions, security questions such as protecting data in the cloud, providing audit reports for inspection and ensuring regulatory compliance are becoming increasingly important. For enterprises looking at moving critical workloads to the cloud, the combination of Novell Identity Manager 4 and Novell Access Manager is the only solution that offers seamless provisioning and access in real-time.

For cloud service providers who want to deliver a secure, compliant computing environment for their customers, the Novell Cloud Security Service offers a multi-tenant environment with built-in metering, billing and auditing.