Centrify Tuesday extended its Active Directory-based cross-platform security and compliance widgetry to the cloud with the release of Express 2011, a major new version of its suite of free solutions.

It promises automated security for Linux cloud servers, reporting identity and privilege management data to both the free or licensed version of Splunk, the operational intelligence solution.

The new Express 2011 spans both on-premise and cloud systems and adds support for nine more Linux platforms along with the ability to administer and manage local Linux/Unix accounts.

Centrify says, “IT administrators can now rapidly launch and secure Linux servers in the cloud and obtain the operational visibility that enables them to meet their security and compliance requirements.”

Express is a suite of five programs covering authentication, single sign-on, remote access, file sharing and reporting that integrates Unix, Linux and Mac systems into a Windows authentication environment.

Its CloudTools module secures Linux systems deployed in the cloud.

The company says IT managers can pre-configure cloud servers using Amazon AMI images or RightScale ServerTemplates scripts to dynamically apply Active Directory authentication and access control policies to Linux cloud systems.

Its reworked DirectManage Express, a centralized management point for both on-premise and cloud-based systems, automatically discovers Linux systems, a handy effort-saving fillip for organizations deploying and managing dozens, hundreds or thousands of servers.

Administrators can centrally manage local accounts and groups on Linux, Unix and Mac systems whether or not those systems have been joined to Active Directory. They can also create, edit or delete local accounts and groups on a single system or a group of systems.

Centrify says it has also updated some of its pre-configured versions of the open source OpenSSH, PuTTY and Samba for remote access and file sharing in an Active Directory environment.

It claims Express, a subset of Centrify Suite 2011, contains more capabilities than other free mojo and offers more advanced enterprise features as upgrade options such as role-based access control, privileged identity management, Group Policy, user-level auditing, server isolation and encryption of data-in-motion.

Best practices documentation comes with it to help organizations adopt cloud computing more rapidly by overcoming security risks.

See Centrify Express Download.