Single Sign On (SSO)

The proliferation of cloud applications in the modern working environment forces a confusing variety of credentials and logins on employees. This increases the risk of bad password hygiene and provides a barrier to entry for employees, preventing them from using services that could increase productivity.

Sapphire offers best-of-breed Single Sign-On (SSO) solutions designed to improve user experience by federating user identity across the enterprise, providing a single point of access management across multiple applications and systems. This removes complexity, improves UX, and ensures cybersecurity becomes a positive force in any enterprise.

Empowering
SSO is an example of security controls being deployed as a genuinely positive initiative to assist, rather than inhibit, users by improving UX.

Customisable
Enforce tailored policies across everything from web and mobile applications to AD and LDAP at a granular level to match security policies.

Reporting
Understand and report on access with detailed authentication logs in a business context from a central administration console.

Frequently Asked Questions About Single Sign-On

1. What is SSO?

Single Sign-On, also abbreviated as SSO, is a method used by organisations to enable an end user or different users in an organisation to securely log in to different applications and websites using the same credentials.

Single Sign-On works by allowing the end user to access different software connected to the application they log in to. An example of this is when a user logs in to a single SSO portal, authenticating once, and can then access various cloud applications such as O365 and Salesforce without supplying additional credentials.

Additional to the increased benefits of user experience, SSO gives full and granular control of the organisation over access rights for all users giving an increased security posture, especially around user management.

2. What are the benefits of Single Sign-On?

When members of your organisation only require one set of login credentials to access applications, the authentication system allows the following benefits;

Improved productivity when they save time logging in to all web applications they need access to.
Reduced password fatigue. SSO services eliminate the need for employees having to remember or store different passwords for different applications.
Improved cybersecurity for your business. When employees do not need separate authentication systems to access applications, you reduce the security risks that come with poor password storage.
Lower IT costs as internal support on such things as forgotten passwords and issuing password resets are reduced. In addition to this, the user management process of new starters, movers and leavers is more efficient.

3. What is the difference between Single sign-on (SSO) and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)?

MFA uses several systems to authenticate a user, often needing an email address, password, a PIN, or OTP, among other methods. On the other hand, SSO uses all factors of Multi-Factor Authentication to authenticate initially to the SSO portal and therefore adding an extra level of security to all assigned applications.

Ultimately SSO simplifies the login process for users, reduces the risk of credential loss and adds increases security by leveraging MFA across all applications.