Like all of our selections for this issue, Passlogix told us that they were innovators because they look at problems in new ways. What is more important is not that they look at problems in new ways, but how they do it. The “how” in the case of Passlogix is the real differentiator.
Basically, we found that, whether they mean to or not, the company uses a concept, that is rarely used and not well-known, called bypass technology. Bypass technology is a way of thinking that goes around a problem looking for the easy answer to the hard problem. It is far different from thinking out of the box. It's refusing to acknowledge that the box exists in the first place.
One notable result of this way of addressing hard problems is that Passlogix is the first single sign-on (SSO) vendor to address the need to share, instead of just the need to know, as an access management criterion in a credible fashion. This thinking landed them in the innovators group in the Gartner Magic Quadrant.
The Passlogix solution to the shared password challenge is a good example of bypass. The actual solution is simple, if a bit tricky to implement: put the shared credential in a virtual vault and then provide temporary credentials to those who need temporary use of it for the vault. Don't make the shared credential available directly to the users who need to share it, so it cannot be compromised. The vault acts as a sort of proxy.
Passlogix v-Go architecture is extensible, scalable and pervasive across the enterprise to a variety of SSO strategies and third-party products. This extends product shelf life — good for large organizations — and the product line is modular and backward compatible. This approach allows just about any third-party product that needs to hook into the architecture to do so without making fundamental changes.
AT A GLANCE
What it is: A suite of products, including single sign-on
Vendor Passlogix, Inc. - www.passlogix.com
Cost: starting price for v-GO SSO is $69.99 per user
Innovation: Simple approaches to difficult problems in single sign-on
What we liked: We especially liked the approach Passlogix uses to identify hard problems and implement user-friendly responses
Basically, we found that, whether they mean to or not, the company uses a concept, that is rarely used and not well-known, called bypass technology. Bypass technology is a way of thinking that goes around a problem looking for the easy answer to the hard problem. It is far different from thinking out of the box. It's refusing to acknowledge that the box exists in the first place.
One notable result of this way of addressing hard problems is that Passlogix is the first single sign-on (SSO) vendor to address the need to share, instead of just the need to know, as an access management criterion in a credible fashion. This thinking landed them in the innovators group in the Gartner Magic Quadrant.
The Passlogix solution to the shared password challenge is a good example of bypass. The actual solution is simple, if a bit tricky to implement: put the shared credential in a virtual vault and then provide temporary credentials to those who need temporary use of it for the vault. Don't make the shared credential available directly to the users who need to share it, so it cannot be compromised. The vault acts as a sort of proxy.
Passlogix v-Go architecture is extensible, scalable and pervasive across the enterprise to a variety of SSO strategies and third-party products. This extends product shelf life — good for large organizations — and the product line is modular and backward compatible. This approach allows just about any third-party product that needs to hook into the architecture to do so without making fundamental changes.
AT A GLANCE
What it is: A suite of products, including single sign-on
Vendor Passlogix, Inc. - www.passlogix.com
Cost: starting price for v-GO SSO is $69.99 per user
Innovation: Simple approaches to difficult problems in single sign-on
What we liked: We especially liked the approach Passlogix uses to identify hard problems and implement user-friendly responses
