SaaSID Cloud Application Manager review

Many businesses want to reap the productivity benefits from allowing their staff access to cloud applications but are afraid of the potential security risks. As shown in the IT Pro report BYOD in the workplace Friend of Foe, the growing trend in BYOD does nothing to alleviate these fears as users are moving out of the IT department's sphere of influence by using personal devices to do their jobs.

There are plenty of tools available for controlling access to cloud applications but these can be cumbersome to implement and difficult to manage. UK start-up SaaSID has come up with a novel approach to solving this problem.

From the CAM admin portal you can view enrolled web apps and strictly control access to each one

Deployment

Despite the proliferation of hardware devices, a common factor is the web browser. CAM uses a lightweight software agent which plugs into the user's browser. SaaSID also provides freely available software at Apple's App Store for all iOS devices.

We found agent deployment a simple process as it can be pushed silently to end points or emailed as a link to users. For testing purposes we focused on Google Chrome and had the CAM extension loaded in seconds.

The CAM user portal presents only those apps you are permitted to access

The CAM admin portal

The admin portal is well designed and easy to use. We added our users and groups manually but most businesses will want to use CAM's support for Active Directory (AD) synchronisation via LDAP.

Selected users can be given certain administrative rights allowing some functions to be delegated. Six different options are provided and include application, audit and user management.

From the System menu you have two options for controlling user logins. The In-line Login only forces users to authenticate with CAM if they want to access controlled web apps. This allows them to go to other web sites without authenticating but it does mean that CAM can't audit all their web activity.

If Forced Login is enabled then all users will be redirected to the CAM portal the moment they load a web browser. They will not be allowed to visit any web site until they have been authenticated and the added advantage is CAM can audit all their web access.