What is Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication? What are your benefits?
Remembering passwords for website logins can be difficult, isn’t it? Especially when you create several for greater security and, if you don’t write it down or save it somewhere, you need to reset it all the time. This is a dilemma that anyone goes through on the internet. That’s why Single Sign-On (SSO) is a possibility increasingly used by people and companies.
Will it be the end of passwords ? Called single login, this technology facilitates people’s daily lives, which through a single button can log in anywhere.
Safety, convenience and practicality . There are many factors that benefit this SSO method. Keep reading this article and understand better about it and why you should always use it in your business to have more security. Let’s go?
What is Single Sign-On (SSO)?
Do you know when you enter a new website, you need to register and instead of filling in several fields with your data, there is the option “login with a Google account” or “login with Facebook”? This simple button represents single sign-on in practice.
Therefore, this method is a way for you to log in anywhere without having to create an account from scratch or wasting time filling in your information repeatedly.
Because it’s important?
The best example to demonstrate the importance would be to use an analogy with this everyday situation: imagine that every time you entered a bar or restaurant you had to prove your personal data and, above all, your age for every purchase of alcoholic beverages?
Do you agree that these continuous checks are frustrating? This is how an SSO system works: instead of establishing their identity over and over again, a user establishes their identity once and can access many different services.
That’s why it’s important, in addition to ensuring more practicality, it improves the user experience and makes a good impression of the company that requires your data.
If for personal use it is already useful, now imagine in the corporate environment? There are so many logins needed daily, that saving this information will optimize time and prevent the loss of valuable information.
How does Single Sign-On work?
Every time a user logs into an SSO service, they save their data and create a single sign-on authentication token that reminds them that the user has been verified.
Thus, it is stored as a temporary identification card issued to the user that can be used on any website or application or software that is verified with the service.
It is worth noting that SSO does not necessarily remember who a user is, as it does not store user identities, but rather checks that person’s credentials against a separate identity management service.
It’s more or less like a librarian looking for a book by title and finding the author who wrote it in the system. 🤓
The most popular logins offered in SSO are Google, Facebook and LinkedIn .
Therefore, to activate it in your routine, you only need to access the system for the first time and enter all the necessary information, clicking on ‘allow’ in the information sharing;
Afterwards, it is no longer necessary to log in manually, as the same password used above is enough to log in.
It can often be found in business contexts when user applications are assigned and managed by an internal IT team.
What are the benefits of SSO?
As already mentioned, single sign-on in addition to bringing practicality, convenience and security to users, it brings other advantages, such as: 👇
stronger passwords
If you create a password combined with numbers , letters and symbols, it is much more difficult for someone to discover it. But creating several passwords in this style takes work and is more complex than it seems, especially for recording.
With SSO you can create one and use it on other channels without having to keep typing or creating one from scratch, everything is done automatically.
non-repeating passwords
When you need to remember different passwords for different logins, it is normal to experience ” password fatigue “, that is, the reuse of passwords.
However, using the same password across multiple services is a huge security risk, because it means that all services are only as secure as the service with the weakest password protection. With SSO this is reduced because there is only one access login.
Best enforced password policy
Since there is a place for password entry, SSO makes it easier for IT teams to easily apply cyber defense rules for password security architectures .
For example, some companies require users to periodically reset their passwords. With SSO, password resets are easier to implement.
multifactor authentication
Also known as MFA, it refers to using more than one identity factor to authenticate a user.
An example is if you log into a website, but require another action to confirm your identity, such as an SMS and email code or the installation of a security app.
Thus, single sign-on makes it possible to enable MFA at a single point.
password re-enter
Administrators can enforce credential re-entering after a certain period of time to ensure that the same user is still active on the connected device. Since with SSO this is done in one place.
Internally managed credentials
Most of the time your passwords are stored remotely in an unmanaged way by applications and services that may or may not follow security best practices.
With SSO they are stored in an environment where the IT team has more access control and recovery, if necessary.
Faster password recovery
Complementing the previous topic, as IT has access to this system, it is easier to find a lost password and still saves time helping users to recover, remember or reset the password.