Subscriber Services for Application Service Providers

A few years ago the “buzz” was Application Service Providers. Industry watchers predicted that enterprises would no longer own and operate their application, but would rather lease applications from service providers. This mass migration did not come. However, there are an increasing number of Service Providers selling shared services over the web. Some are as generic as storage, some as specific as applications for running doctors' offices. Both the Providers and their Clients demand that the access to these shared services are controlled:

• Providers want to make sure that services are not stolen (used without being paid for)

• Clients want to make sure that their sensitive information is protected from other users and hackers

Today a number of schemes are used to provide access control: user passwords, VPNs, and PKIs. None of these schemes deliver the required security at an acceptable cost of ownership.

The Sevan WSA provides strong access control at the lowest cost of ownership. The providers simply installs a WSA between their servers and the Internet. The provider uses the WSA to divide the servers into independent resources – a set of resources for each client. The provider distributes enrollment passwords to the clients, who use the passwords to subscribe to access their resources. Once clients subscribe, they can access their resources based on their digital certificate – no more passwords. The WSA prevents non-subscribers from accessing the web site. The WSA also prevents one subscriber from accessing another subscriber's resources.

The provider can manage the subscribers (creating and removing new users) or the provider can delegate user management to the subscribers. If user management is delegated, the subscriber can add and remove users. This saves the provider in help desk cost. More importantly the provider no longer has the liability of unauthorized users, since the subscribers are responsible for the users.

The Sevan WSA provides convenient, secure, and low-cost solution for sharing applications over the web.