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CloudGate Story
This is the story of how CloudGate achieved its current leading position in the Japanese market.
Multi-factor Authentication (MFA)
CloudGate’s latest version is now connected to more than 30 cloud services
CloudGate has experienced steady growth (from 150,000 to 800,000 users*) in the last five years, in part due to its high service availability rating during that time (99.99% each year). A very important factor driving this expansion has been the rapid adoption of software as a service (SaaS), or cloud services, within the enterprise market. Microsoft Office 365 has played a huge role in accelerating user adoption of cloud services in this market. CloudGate support for Office 365 was launched in 2015, and the need for SSO for Office 365, in parallel with that of G Suite, has been a major factor driving our growth over the last two years, as many corporate users are deploying both G Suite (for mail) and Office 365 (for groupware).
Salesforce, Box, Rakumo, Kintone and many other cloud services have also greatly contributed to the growth of the SaaS market. Within the small and medium business (SMB) sector, many companies’ main applications are now cloud-based. For CloudGate, the SMB sector growth now surpasses that of the large corporations (LCS) segment, reflecting the acceleration of the adoption of cloud services in that sector of the market.
* Record as of end of September 2019
“In parallel with the rise of cloud services in the last few years, we have witnessed an increase of internet breaches as well.”
In parallel with the rise of cloud services in the last few years, we have witnessed an increase of internet breaches as well. This trend has increased dramatically.
In the US and Japan, there was a breach of major government data—government employee data in the US and personal pension data in Japan. Also within the past year, we have seen a dramatic escalation of internet breaches. The breaching of the personal email account of Clinton’s campaign manager during the US presidential election, and similarly during the French presidential election, are well-known cyberattacks. More recently, the WannaCry ransomware virus, as well as the compromise of customer data at a major SSO provider in the US, are equally shocking.
“Passwords are at the heart of these breaches and there is an urgent need to replace passwords as the primary method of user authentication.”
CloudGate’s latest version is now connected to more than 30 cloud services
CloudGate has experienced steady growth (from 150,000 to 800,000 users) in the last five years, in part due to its high service availability rating during that time (99.99% each year). A very important factor driving this expansion has been the rapid adoption of software as a service (SaaS), or cloud services, within the enterprise market. Microsoft Office 365 has played a huge role in accelerating user adoption of cloud services in this market. CloudGate support for Office 365 was launched in 2015, and the need for SSO for Office 365, in parallel with that of G Suite, has been a major factor driving our growth over the last two years, as many corporate users are deploying both G Suite (for mail) and Office 365 (for groupware).
Salesforce, Box, Rakumo, Kintone and many other cloud services have also greatly contributed to the growth of the SaaS market. Within the small and medium business (SMB) sector, many companies’ main applications are now cloud-based. For CloudGate, the SMB sector growth now surpasses that of the large corporations (LCS) segment, reflecting the acceleration of the adoption of cloud services in that sector of the market.
“In parallel with the rise of cloud services in the last few years, we have witnessed an increase of internet breaches as well.”
In parallel with the rise of cloud services in the last few years, we have witnessed an increase of internet breaches as well. This trend has increased dramatically.
In the US and Japan, there was a breach of major government data—government employee data in the US and personal pension data in Japan. Also within the past year, we have seen a dramatic escalation of internet breaches. The breaching of the personal email account of Clinton’s campaign manager during the US presidential election, and similarly during the French presidential election, are well-known cyberattacks. More recently, the WannaCry ransomware virus, as well as the compromise of customer data at a major SSO provider in the US, are equally shocking.
“Passwords are at the heart of these breaches and there is an urgent need to replace passwords as the primary method of user authentication.”
Most of these breaches can be traced back to Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attacks during which user credentials were compromised. Passwords are at the heart of these breaches and there is an urgent need to replace passwords as the primary method of user authentication. The Fast IDentity Online (FIDO) Alliance is an association of over 250 companies worldwide whose mission it is to develop standard protocols that enable easy to use, strong authentication which complement or replace passwords.
ISR joined the FIDO Alliance in late 2014, and then in early 2015, released CloudGate support for the FIDO U2F protocol using YubiKey® hardware tokens as strong second-factor authentication. Late in 2015, employing FIDO security principles, we also released CloudGate support for enabling smartphone fingerprint-based authorization for user login from PCs or other desktop-based devices. At ISR, we strongly believe that biometrics will revolutionize authentication—that by taking us beyond passwords, this growing trend will usher in a more secure internet.
