By IT Brew Staff
less than 3 min read
Definition:
With single sign-on (SSO), authorized users only need to enter their login credentials once onto a single page to access multiple applications or systems, such as a company’s suite of productivity apps.
When a user successfully signs into an SSO portal, their web browser or the SSO system stores a session authentication token, which validates the user’s access to selected apps. There are multiple flavors of SSO, including adaptive SSO, which asks for additional identity verification methods if the user engages in behaviors that could open the door to cyberattacks, such as signing in from a totally new device. Social logins also allow users to access systems or websites via the credentials used for popular sites such as Facebook, Google, or Apple.
SSO spares users the aggravation of filling out their username, password, and other verification details every time they attempt to access a new app or dashboard within an organization’s ecosystem. From the perspective of the IT pro tasked with setting up the organization’s identity and access management (IAM), SSO also confers important benefits, including:
- Less password fatigue. When people need multiple logins, they tend to reuse the same passwords, raising the potential for a security breach. By reducing the number of logins to one, SSO can help boost an organization’s cybersecurity posture.
- Improved multi-factor authentication (MFA) usage. SSO can also boost an organization’s cybersecurity by requiring multi-factor authentication at a single point, rather than trying to manage it across multiple apps throughout an ecosystem.
- Quicker password recovery. Many IT pros have burned too many hours of their lives on helping employees recover lost passwords. With SSO in place, IT pros likely spend less time resetting or recovering user passwords, and more on other useful tasks.
An increased cybersecurity posture and more bandwidth for the help desk are powerful motivators for organizations to embrace SSO, but there are also some risks; for example, SSO could mean an attacker who seizes an employee’s username and password could access multiple systems and sensitive data. For that reason, implementing MFA alongside SSO could be considered a best practice.
