Centrify Corporation and Dropbox partner to enable secure access for Dropbox for Business. Centrify is an industry leader in unified identity services across the data center, cloud and mobile. Dropbox is a service that lets you store, sync and share your photos, docs and videos securely. From Dropbox’s end, this development is seen as a counter to Box’s recent moves, who is trying to become the enterprise’s first choice for storage.

Dropbox for Business teaming with Centrify means that users now have one less password to remember. Centrify specializes in single sign-on (SSO) and is an easy-to-deploy cloud service that offers the industry’s most comprehensive solution for SSO. The added level of security improves trust for Dropbox’s enterprise-level cloud document management and file-sharing application., Dropbox for Business. Centrify is providing Dropbox for Business with SSO control access via Active Directory and the SAML standard. This means that IT will be able to oversee who’s accessing what programs and when.

“We’re excited to partner with Centrify to offer single sign-on and integration to Dropbox for Business customers of all sizes across the world,” said Ari Friedland, head of business development for Dropbox for Business. “We’re leveraging the SSO industry standard, SAML, and working with Centrify to let our customers leverage their Active Directory identities for seamless access to Dropbox, with one less password to remember and maintain.”

Here is the current rub for the enterprise: every SaaS applications represents yet another silo of yet another opportunity for identity theft from access control challenges. Centrify Cloud Service fixes this rub by simplifying deployment of federated identity for Dropbox SSO, leveraging Active Directory and launching with a nice compliment of pre-integrated SaaS apps. Centrify delivers zero sign-on (ZSO) for mobile users that require access to Dropbox for Business. A simple five minute install securely connects Active Directory to Dropbox for Business via the Centrify Cloud Service without replicating sensitive data to the cloud or a 3rd-party.

Buried in the announcement is that Centrify and Dropbox are joining in a sales and marketing partnership too. That partnership will include everything from: webinars, marketing campaigns, sales introductions and referral programs.

Forrester did a report in 2012 on BYOD(C) and how, more than ever, companies are reliant on their employees devices and computers. CIOs have referred to this as ‘Dropbox syndrome. Dropbox has been the clear leader in consumer-focused storage to date. One of its main competitors, Box, has been an early aggressor in shifting from consumer storage to enterprise storage and file management. Box is showcasing it has the ear of the enterprise.

Consider this a big move on the chessboard for Dropbox trying to get some of the ear of the enterprise.