Microsoft today announced it has acquired Alacris, a privately-held software company located in Ottawa, Canada. Alacris provides certificate management and identity assurance technology to help enterprise customers build strong credential authentication solutions into their networks and applications. Microsoft's goal in making this investment is to enable customers to deploy and manage their strong credential infrastructures more easily and improve the efficiency of their security management processes in the Microsoft Windows operating system. The acquisition of Alacris enhances Microsoft’s strategy of providing easily administered identity and access management solutions, and underscores Microsoft’s commitment to network security. The investment will also bring the benefits of strong authentication technologies, such as smart cards, to a broader range of customers.

PressPass spoke with Conrad Bayer, vice president and CTO of Alacris, and Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Security Technology Unit, to learn more about what the acquisition will mean for customers.