Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School Deploys Centrify Solution to Manage School's Mac Users within Active Directory

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Nov. 30, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Centrify Corporation, the leading provider of security and compliance solutions that centrally control, secure and audit access to cross-platform systems and applications using Active Directory, today announced that the Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School (Columbia Prep) is leveraging its Centrify Suite solution to centralize all security and policy controls for its growing Macintosh student and faculty user populations.  Now, Columbia Prep centrally controls access and manages preferences for its more than 450 Mac computers using the same methodology employed for its Windows systems — all in Active Directory.

Located in New York City, Columbia Grammar School was founded in 1764, ten years after the founding of Kings College (later Columbia University), as a boys' preparatory school for the college.  In 1937, the Leonard School for Girls was founded, using several interconnected brownstone buildings which today serve as part of Columbia Prep's grammar school.  The schools joined in 1956 to become a coed institution.

"We were very impressed with the Centrify tool set, it was exactly what we were looking for," said Adam Gerson, Columbia Prep Co-Director of Technology.  "Centrify's tool set completely meets our needs, and the sales team and engineering have been very easy to work with.  In one instance, they went out of their way to work with a third-party vendor to help them customize something for us."

According to Gerson, Columbia Prep considered three approaches to solving this problem, but selected Centrify due to its superior user interface and integration into its heterogeneous environment, and ease of installation compared to the other solutions.

"Other solutions would have required multiple Mac servers which we would have been unable to virtualize," he said.  "With Centrify, we don't need additional servers to manage our Mac environment.   The bottom line is Centrify gives us a single way to authenticate our user population across a mixed Mac and Windows environment and does so in a simpler and more reliable way."

In addition to the centralized management of authentication and access control for the Columbia Prep Mac users, Gerson also leverages Centrify's Mac-specific Group Policy capabilities to set managed preferences on the Mac clients.  This saves the IT team considerable overhead and management, which otherwise they would have to manually set preferences on all machines and ask users to set their preferences according to Columbia Prep's standards.

"Columbia Prep is one of the oldest education institutions in the country, and we are pleased to work with them to centralize the management and authentication of their Mac systems," said Gary Taggart, VP of Worldwide Sales.  "Centrify has the right solution for organizations looking to use Active Directory to centralize authentication and management of their non-Windows systems.  Organizations in nearly all industries are dealing with a growing Mac user population and value a consistent and cost-efficient approach to managing them."

About the Centrify Suite
The Centrify Suite lets organizations centrally control, secure and audit access to cross-platform systems and applications by leveraging an infrastructure they already own — Microsoft Active Directory.  Built on an integrated architecture, the Centrify Suite strengthens security, enhances regulatory compliance initiatives, and reduces IT expense and complexity.  The Centrify Suite — consisting of DirectControl DirectAuthorize, DirectAudit , DirectSecure  and DirectManage  — delivers secure authentication and single sign-on, role-based access control, privileged identity management, user-level auditing for Windows and UNIX systems, server isolation, and encryption of data-in-motion for the industry's broadest set of heterogeneous systems and applications.

About Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School
Columbia Prep is committed to a rigorous and comprehensive college preparatory curriculum with a serious emphasis on art, music and drama.  The academic program is structured and balanced within the liberal arts and sciences in order to develop a student's intellectual potential to its fullest for college and beyond.  Columbia Prep is a fully independent, non-sectarian school governed by a Board of Trustees composed of alumni and parents.  The school is accredited by the New York State Association of Independent Schools, the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, and the New York State Board of Regents.

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 3,500 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/.

Centrify, DirectAudit, DirectControl and DirectSecure are registered trademarks and DirectAuthorize and DirectManage are trademarks of Centrify Corporation in the United States and other countries.

Contact:
Dan Spalding
[email protected] 
(408) 960-9297

SOURCE Centrify Corporation