We’ll examine single sign-on in this post and what it can achieve for your company. Before studying how Single Sign-On (SSO) could benefit your company, let’s first define what it is. By utilising the same login credentials, such as a username and password, a user may log into many applications that support SSO. SSO makes managing usernames and passwords easier for individuals, small businesses, and corporations.
In order to get specific authentication credentials from a dedicated SSO policy server and authenticate users against a user repository, such as an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) directory, a more widespread SSO that is connected to your browser requires an application server agent module. By authenticating the user for all apps to which they already have access in the same session, the service decreases the number of passwords and usernames that must be memorised for various individual applications.
How Single Sign-On works
Open Authorization, often known as OAuth, is a framework that enables Facebook and other third-party services to access a user’s account information without knowing the user’s password.
By providing the service with an access token, OAuth acts as a go-between between the end user and the service. Before enabling access, the service provider will utilise the identity provider to verify the user’s identity each time they attempt to use one of its apps.
The Different Types of SSO Configurations
The protocols Kerberos and Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) are used by many SSO services.
Extensible markup language (XML) is used by the SAML standard to transmit authentication and authorisation data across secure domains. In SAML-based SSO services, three parties—a user, an identity provider, and a service provider—all interact with one another.
When Kerberos is used, a ticket-granting ticket (TGT) is produced once the user’s credentials are submitted. For each subsequent application the user wants to access, TGT obtains service tickets without requiring them to provide their credentials again.
A user must first log in with their username and password from their smart card when utilising smart card-based SSO. When the card is initially used, usernames and passwords can be automatically entered. Depending on the SSO solution, users and passwords will be stored on smart cards.
The Security Risks of SSO
Single Sign-On may make it simpler for you to remember all of your usernames and passwords, but it has the seeming disadvantage of providing anyone who is able to get into your SSO service access to all of your identities and passwords. By using measures like 2FA (Two Factor Authentication) or sporadically MFA (Multi Factor Authentication), many SSOs reduce this risk.
Social SSO
Using the SSO services offered by Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, users can sign in to a third-party application using the login information they use for social network authentication. Regrettably, social SSOs experience the same security problems as regular SSOs. This implies that if they are successful in gaining access to your SSO, they will know every username and password.
Enterprise SSO
Using the SSO services offered by Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, users can sign in to a third-party application using the login information they use for social network authentication. Regrettably, social SSOs experience the same security problems as regular SSOs. This implies that if they are successful in gaining access to your SSO, they will know every username and password.
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