SSO refers to a Single Sign-On portal for the users, enabling them to use one as their user credentials to access all their apps on the web in the cloud and behind the firewall. This has proved to be a blessing for the users that saves time and ensures various other benefits. The companies have now got something that provides multiple benefits to them with a single login.
Here is a brief discussion about how these two systems work and what is the need of each one of them in an organization:
- Cloud SSO: It does not support access to the applications that are popular on-premises applications. Such applications include PeopleSoft, e-business suite. It also lacks the support for the patterns which are integrated like Gerber’s, Header based authentication and IWA
- On-premise SSO: These lack the key carriers required to support the applications on the cloud, including popular apps like Office 365, Salesforce, and AWS. It also lacks the new age features of security, which are needed in the public networks, like password less access to the network and the Ability to endure easy scaling of cloud traffic support.
Benefits of enabling SSO between on-premise and cloud application
Here are some of the benefits of enabling SSO between on premise and cloud application:
- Increased productivity: With the features like passwords refers, provisioning projects, manual de-provisioning and shadow IT policing, and it helps the company to increase its productivity to a great extent.
- Reduced costs: The major factor influencing a business is its finances. If they are taken care of properly, half of the battle is won. The automated processes, deployment of integrated applications and much more enable the company to eliminate identity infrastructure costs. This reduction in the costs helps it in infinite other ways.
- Strong security: Security is a major problem of concern for an organisation. By executing the identity policy across its users, clouds, and devices, it helps make sure that instances like data breach and losing data do not occur at all.
- Growth: Things that relate to the growth of an enterprise are not limited to a certain area. With the new king of SO between on promise and cold application, users get an opportunity to start instantly with the required apps, along with aligning with the identity policy completely.
- Increased Finances: With the implementation of these techniques, the companies tend to witness a great increase in the overall finances.
Required roles and services
To configure and ensure that the web applications are activated in the cloud, here are a few roles of an administrator:
- Security administrator
- Identity domain administrator
- Application administrator
Accessing the applications and various kinds of services may need users to keep a regular check on multiple URLs, passwords, and usernames. When the cloud provides SSO capability across on-premises and cloud applications, it is highly convenient for users to access the applications and maintain high-end security.
As it is difficult to migrate the applications on-premises, identity management becomes even more challenging. One has to add software as a service that is also referred to as SaaS. There are various ways that the cloud provides to integrate and take advantage of SSO.
With the help of a single sign-in, it is easily controllable to manage who can have access to SSO, and the users can, after that, enjoy one-click access to all these apps. While it also connects most securely through trusted relationships, this trust is formed when the application is added from the SSO console-After that, configuring it with appropriate metadata is the most desired input.
After installing the application successfully, one can manage the users who have to access the applications. No users are assigned by default; they have to be added manually, ensuring efficient use. Here are the following applications supported by AWS SSO:
- Cloud applications
- AWS SSO integrated applications
- Custom security assertion markup language.
The system also allows the employees to grant access to the management console for a single account.
The required balance for the system
As SSO enables the user to access many apps simultaneously with just one credential and a single click, it tends to raise the impact of the user’s credential being compromised.
MFA is a method of controlling the access where the user is given the access only when he successfully presents separate pieces of evidence, typically any two: possession, inference or knowledge. The most common type of MFA used is two-factor authentication, also called 2FA.
Here is an example to understand things more clearly:
Most of us are aware of two-step verification which includes a password and then setting up an OTP as a sector factor. Other factors involved are OTP, phone call or SMS. As it involves 2 factors in the authentication, it is called 2FA.
The changing trends
After knowing about the details of the system, here are two major things or the trends that have changed:
- Cloud Solutions support almost all the on-premises applications
- SSO on-premises solutions are getting more deprecated.
The change in this two-key trend has brought about a revolution in the way the system works.
Organisation uses several other variations in the cases where the user is not personally known to the company. A very good example of this is the way credit card companies work. They tend to take out information from their credit files and present these as questions to them. They tend to move further with the course of action only when they can answer all the questions.
Conclusion
It is a really good idea to use SSO for on-premises and the cloud. As these are used, various solutions are answered very easily and abruptly.
While SSO can be used for servers, custom apps and on-premises apps, it is indeed a recommended measure to ensure improvement in not just the user experience but improved standards for administrators too. It enables the organisation to strengthen its security, reduce costs and avoid any kind of deprecated solutions.
Not sure if you could handle it in-house?
You may ask experts to help you in this process, or any other kind of ERP implementation support if needed.
