What is SSO?
Single sign-on (SSO) is a centralized session and user authentication service where a set of login certificates can be used to access multiple applications. Its beauty is in its simplicity; The service authenticates you to a designated platform, enabling you to use different services without having to log in and out every time.
In the most common systems, identity providers and service providers establish a trust relationship through the exchange of digital certificates and metadata, and communicate with each other through open values such as Security Assurance Markup Language (SAML), OAuth, or OpenID.
Used properly, SSO can be great for productivity, IT monitoring and management, and security control. With a security token (pairing of a username and password), an administrator can enable and disable user access to multiple systems, platforms, apps and other resources. SSO also reduces the risk of losing, forgetting, or weak passwords.
Why is SSO important?
SSO is important because user needs The number of enterprise services and accounts for controlled access is constantly expanding, and the security requirements for each of these services are usually provided by a pair of usernames / passwords. But managing and managing all those accounts can be a burden for administrators and users who struggle to choose strong passwords for multiple accounts. Centralizes the process for both administrators and users while maintaining secure access to single sign-on applications.
There are some different values that can be used to implement SSO, but they all follow the same basic underlying pattern. The key is that they make it possible for applications to delegate user authentication responsibilities to another application or service.
From a system administrator’s point of view, the SSO platform represents a one-stop shop where user IDs can be managed. When an employee leaves a company, for example, the ability to log in to a host of their internal applications may be revoked at once.
Single sign-on terminology
Three key terms you need to know in SSO Lingo:
- Service Provider: In the context of an SSO, it is an application or website that a user may want to log in. Anything from an email client to a bank website to network share. Most of these platforms will include their own functionality for authentication if users stand alone, but not in the case of SSO.
- Provider: Through SSO, the responsibility for authenticating users is delegated to an identity provider — usually the SSO platform itself. When the user attempts to access the Service Provider, the Service Provider will consult with the Provider to confirm that the User has proved that they are claiming. The service provider may place parameters around how authentication works: for example, it may require that the identity provider should use two-factor authentication (2FA) or biometrics. The identity provider will either ask the user to log in, or, if they have recently logged in, may notify the service provider without further ado.
- Token: These are small collections of structured information that are digitally signed to ensure mutual trust, and they are the means by which service and identity providers communicate. These tokens will tell the identifying service provider that the user has authenticated — but, importantly, the tokens do not include authentication data such as user password or biometric data. As a result, even if the tokens are intercepted by the attacker or the service provider’s systems are compromised, the user’s password and identity are protected. Users may use the same login certificate for any service provider using that identifier.
Single sign-on example
Imagine that you are a user in an environment with a single sign-on and you are trying to access some resources on a server. Here is the sequence of events for how SSO works:
- You try to access the service provider. Again, this is usually an application or website that you want to access.
- As part of the authentication request to the user, the service provider sends a token containing some information about you, such as your email address, identity provider, an introduction to your SSO system.
- The identity provider first checks to see if you are already authenticated, in which case it will give you access to the service provider’s application and move on to step 5.
- If you are not logged in, you will be asked to provide a certificate regardless of the identity provider’s request.
- Once these credentials have been verified, the identity provider will return a token to the service provider, confirming that it has authenticated you.
- This token has been sent to the service provider through your browser.
- Once received, the token is verified according to the trust relationship established between the service provider and the identity provider during the initial configuration.
- The user is granted access to the service provider.
If you want to take a closer look at the adventures of the messages that are repeatedly passed in this type of transaction, see Here is an example from OneLogin. This example is based on SAML; You can dig up the entire XML code for the type of claim being made from the provider to the service provider in the situation described above.
Single sign-on security facility
The biggest security advantage of SSO in Enterprise is that it allows an organization to increase the number of users এবং and the number of associated logins — without sacrificing security or getting stuck in an endless account system. Thanks to automated certificate management, Sysadmins and manually all employees do not have to worry about accessing the services of their choice. This in turn reduces the cause of human error and frees up IT time to focus on more important tasks.
Other benefits include faster access to cloud-first applications; If your SSO implementation supports the emergence of open standards such as SAML 2.0, the application can be quickly regulated by an SSO administrator and rolled out to employees. SSO can be integrated with 2FA for added security and provide productivity gain and low IT help desk password reset.
SSO secure?
SSO is a silver bullet, but it would be wrong to recommend it. The challenges of implementing SSO include cost, control, standardization (SAML vs. OAuth), and yes, security. Authentication error, e.g. Sign in with Apple Weakness Or Microsoft OAuth error Allow an attacker to log in to a site or service as if they were the target of a target.
You’ll also want to remember that you need to integrate your SSO platform with your larger organizational IT architecture and think carefully about how this can be done while maintaining your overall security posture. For example, an SSO system downstream security tool may make it impossible to identify the original IP address of a user trying to log in to your system.
That said, single sign-on often provides a stronger level of security than an option where users have to maintain separate logins across multiple enterprise services. In particular, SSO reduces the attack surface of your infrastructure: you have fewer passwords to remember your users and to log in fewer times a day. Centralized administration makes it easier for administrators to impose strong passwords and security measures like 2FA across the board. The bottom line is that SSO is no less secure than an infrastructure without it, and almost always more so.
Single sign-on seller
You need to consider a variety of SSO solutions to roll out your own open source platforms, starting with commercial offers. To learn more about how some top SSO tools stack up and the different methods and considerations, see “Single Sign-On Solution: How to Compare 9 Top Tools.”
Top sellers of SSO tools include:
- Duo / Cisco SSO
- Adaptive single sign-on
- ManageEngine / Zoho Identity Manager Plus
- Microfocus / NetIQ Access Manager
- Okta single sign-on
- OneLogin single sign-on
- PerfectCloud SmartSignIn
- Ping Identity PingOne
- RSA SecurID Access Suite
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