Dropbox For Business Launches With Single Sign-On For Improved Security

Dropbox, the file-sharing service often serving as the poster child for consumer-friendly cloud services with a terrible security reputation commonly used by business users, is continuing a push to become more business-friendly with the addition of a single sign-on capability.

The company is also renaming its Dropbox for Teams SMB cloud storage and file-sharing service as Dropbox for Business.

Dropbox on Wednesday said it is enabling single sign-on via Active Directory or some other central identity provider as a way to provide increased security and management for businesses and their users.

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Anand Subramani, a product manager at Dropbox, wrote in a blog post that single sign-on is one of the features most requested by customers.

The addition of a single sign-on feature comes after a string of moves Dropbox has recently made in order to make its service much more useful for business users.

Last month, for instance, Dropbox expanded the scope of its business from cloud file-sharing and synchronization to email by acquiring Mailbox, an iOS mobile app designed to manage emails on iPhones and iPads.

Dropbox in August implemented a two-factor authentication procedure in response to the theft of hundreds of customer email addresses after an employee's password was stolen, as well as spam caused by thefts of usernames and passwords from other sites that were used to access Dropbox accounts.

NEXT: Renaming 'Dropbox for Teams' As 'Dropbox for Business'

Subramani, in his blog post, wrote that single sign-on, or SSO, provides both ease-of-use and enhanced security for business users.

"For users, SSO means ease -- one fewer password to remember and one fewer step to get to your work. Once logged in to your system, there's no need to sign in to Dropbox separately. For IT admins, SSO means additional security and administrative management. Single sign-on gives you complete ownership of the authentication process and works with your company's existing password policies. It also easily ties into the existing Dropbox provisioning and de-provisioning API to provide further Active Directory integration," he wrote.

Dropbox is also working with a number of identity provider partners including Ping Identity, Okta, OneLogin, Centrify and Symplified to implement single sign-on starting in May, Subramani wrote. The new security feature also works with any provider that implements industry-standard Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), he wrote.

Subramani also wrote that Dropbox is dropping the Dropbox for Teams moniker for its business offering and renaming it Dropbox for Business. "With all the changes we're making to create a Dropbox that’s better for companies both large and small, it's become clear that the name 'Dropbox for Teams' doesn’t quite fit anymore," he wrote.

Dropbox for Business provides file and email sharing, collaboration and synchronization across multiple users, and provides business management capabilities.

PUBLISHED ON APRIL 10, 2013