Remote Access: Simplified Access Management According to Zero Trust Principles

The Remote Maintenance Solution from genua Now Supports Authentication via Cloud Identity Providers Okta and Azure Active Directory

Kirchheim, March 16, 2022. The German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has approved the High Resistance Firewall genugate 10.0 Z for classification level German VS-NfD, as well as classification levels RESTREINT UE/EU RESTRICTED, and NATO RESTRICTED¹. Effective immediately, this current version of the IT security solution supports a REST-API as well as central log evaluation via Elastic Stack. Government institutions as well as businesses with very high protection requirements can thereby extensively automate administration tasks, further consolidate IT infrastructures and, at the same time, reliably secure sensitive infrastructures against cyber risks.

Kirchheim near Munich, Germany, November 9, 2022. The remote maintenance solution genubox from the Munich-based IT security specialists genua GmbH now supports the use of cloud-based identity systems. Connecting to a cloud identity provider such as Okta or Azure Active Directory enables the full integration of genua remote maintenance into a central user management system with commonly used multi-factor authentication. Companies benefit from scalable client, role, and rights concepts and users can authenticate themselves via their usual method.

Safeguarding Individual Services According to Zero Trust

Due to the increasing digitization of processes in sensitive IT and OT environments such as industrial production and critical infrastructures, zero trust concepts are also becoming more important in the context of secure remote access. In zero trust environments, identity and access management plays a fundamental role because it enables external users to have authenticated access to individual, defined services, without affecting the overall security of the network.

The remote maintenance solution from genua is based on a highly secure rendezvous architecture and uses a software defined perimeter to support the safeguarding of individual services according to the zero trust paradigm. The newly created interface to cloud-based identity and access management systems such as Okta, Azure Active Directory and other open-source providers now enables customers to easily integrate the remote maintenance solution into existing identity and access management systems. As a result, access for employees, service providers and partners can be efficiently regulated from the cloud. This reduces the configuration effort required on the part of the organization and facilitates migration to cloud applications and platforms in a constantly growing IT ecosystem. In addition, it simplifies the process for users, who can perform identification via their usual method.

Highly Scalable User and Role Management

Cloud identity providers enable graduated access management for remote maintenance providers according to the "least privilege access" principle, with sophisticated client, role and rights concepts. Multi-factor authentication and methods such as 2FA authenticator applications are used to ensure that only authorized people can access the respective resources and services. In addition, other criteria defined within the scope of governance can be integrated into the rights concept as parameters, for example the location (region) or the time of access.

With security "made in Germany", the solution from genua meets all recommendations from the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) regarding secure remote maintenance. When used in conjunction with secure VPN solutions from genua, it is also suitable for use in environments with classification level German VS-Nfd.