The Institute of Cancer Research Deploys Centrify's Solution to Centrally Manage Apple Mac Systems within Active Directory

SUNNYVALE, Calif. and BRACKNELL, England, June 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Centrify Corporation, the leading provider of security and compliance solutions that centrally control, secure and audit cross-platform systems and applications using Active Directory, today announced that The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) has deployed its Centrify Suite 2011 solution to unify all security and policy controls for all computer users, including its growing Macintosh user population, within Active Directory. Now, the ICR controls access for its more than 1000 staff members centrally under Active Directory for increased security and lower IT overhead.

From its founding in 1909 as a small research department of the Royal Marsden Hospital, the ICR has grown to become one of the world's foremost independent cancer research organizations. When the ICR began migrating its server infrastructure from Novell Netware to Microsoft Windows Server, it triggered the need to move to Active Directory for all users – including for its then 300 Mac users. Macs have been used within the ICR for almost 20 years. Initially, certain DNA sequencing applications the ICR scientists required were available only on the Mac OS. Today, Macs are important to scientists because of their UNIX foundation – many pieces of bioinformatics software are UNIX-based only.

"With the implementation of Microsoft Active Directory we saw an opportunity to deliver full features for all users, just like our Windows users already have," said Rob Hall, the ICR Assistant Manager of Desktop Services.

With the Centrify solution deployed, the ICR was able to join all Mac systems to their Active Directory domain, enabling centralized authentication and access control, and the use of Microsoft Group Policy to centrally configure and set user and computer policies for all staff no matter their computing preference.

"The ICR needed to set and enforce the same security policies across all users, and change policies in a centralized fashion," said Mr. Hall. "For example, we recently forced a change to the Mac users to use an internal Mac Software Update server. Using a central control system saved time in updating individual machines and also ensured that the ICR Macs receive the latest security and OS enhancement fixes that Apple provides."

"We've just invested heavily in SGI's high-performance computing equipment," Mr. Hall added. "When people start connecting to it we'll want them to log on with their same AD credentials, and we can see Centrify might help us with that, too."

"The ICR's record of achievement in understanding the genetic basis of cancer is second to none, and we are pleased to be working with them to enable a unified security infrastructure," said Darren Gross, Centrify Regional Director for EMEA. "This deployment is a great example of how Centrify streamlines organizations' access control across all platforms, for improved security with less overhead. With Centrify, the ICR uses the same controls from their Windows console to set identical policies for both Mac and PC users, and eases the ICR's help desk burden."

About the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR)

The ICR is Europe's leading cancer research centre; and has been ranked as the UK's top academic research centre, based on the results of the Higher Education Funding Council's Research Assessment Exercise. The ICR works closely with partner The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust to ensure patients immediately benefit from new research. Together the two organisations form the largest comprehensive cancer centre in Europe. The ICR has charitable status and relies on voluntary income, spending 90 pence in every pound of total income directly on research. As a college of the University of London, the ICR also provides postgraduate higher education of international distinction. Over its 100-year history, the ICR's achievements include identifying the potential link between smoking and lung cancer which was subsequently confirmed, discovering that DNA damage is the basic cause of cancer and isolating more cancer-related genes than any other organisation in the world. For more information visit www.icr.ac.uk

About Centrify

Centrify delivers integrated software solutions that centrally control, secure and audit access to cross-platform systems and applications by leveraging the infrastructure organizations already own—Microsoft Active Directory. From the data center and into the cloud more than 3000 organizations, including 40 percent of the Fortune 50, rely on Centrify's identity consolidation and privilege management solutions to reduce IT expenses, strengthen security and meet compliance requirements. For more information about Centrify and its solutions, call +1 (408) 542-7500 or visit http://www.centrify.com.

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SOURCE Centrify Corporation