#sso solution

Today it is very easy for cybercriminals to hack users credentials and other private details. All they need to do is simply download a software and they can easily set up an encrypted ransomware and send thousands of emails to crack users account and credentials. Finding such software is very easy. You just need to type “top password crackers” in the search engines, you will find thousands of tools to attack private accounts.

Passwords are one of the ways that businesses are using to ensure only the authorized user is able to access critical systems. Passwords are considered as the first wall of protection to keep the attackers out.

There are dozens of accounts that we need to access on the daily basis and have to protect them with passwords. To keep the things easy, we keep the passwords same for the all accounts we have.

So, having the strong and different passwords for all the accounts is definitely a good approach. But unfortunately, having different passwords for different accounts leads you in big trouble because you have to remember lots of passwords.

 This is where single sign-on came into the role. User can use one set of credentials to access all the services related to a business. Users don’t need to remember bunch of passwords.

 But again, you end up with a single set of credentials. But this time, SSO saves you because the solution use SAML approach that is security assertion and markup language which is based on XML. Apart from this, SSO has lots of benefits.

Some of them are:

The solution reduces the support help-desk cost.

Makes users free from the fear of passwords.

It improves users productivity.

It provides single and unified view of the customers.

With the increasing competition, businesses are struggling to gather customers data. They are spending lots of dollars in buying customers data from third-party data providers. The issue is bigger for online businesses because for them it is very hard to know the real face of their customers, unlike normal business.

And in this competitive scenario, if you don’t know your customers well, the survival of your business is in danger. Along with knowing customers, improving their experience by reducing the time of web authentication, avoiding users from creating multiple sets of username and password etc. are some important factors to boost your business sales.

The single sign-on solution is a perfect solution that fits in the mentioned scenario. The solution is an interesting way to login to multiple websites that belong to the same business using only one set of credentials. By login to any of the service protected with SSO, users can access other services without login again and again.

By eliminating the need of creating credentials and logging in to every related websites and services, the solution saves users time and effort. Savings user’s time helps them to explore more content. More engagement on the website helps them to know more about your business and improves the chances of purchase.

The best part of SSO solution is that it drives first-party data for your business. That means now you don’t need to spend money on third-party data providers. The data that is driven through SSO is very important from the business point of view. This data helps them in knowing their customers’ true face and in making more result driving strategies.

By eliminating the need of creating unnecessary passwords, it improves users experience which directly improves their productivity.

Single sign-on or SSO solution is a method that provides a seamless web authentication to users. In this method of authentication, users only need one set of credentials for all the online resources and applications instead of different set for each. For an example, if you are logged in to Yahoo mail, you don’t need to login again to access any other services of Yahoo. That means, users only need to authenticate once and they can seamlessly access all the other applications without authenticating again during a single session.

There is no doubt in that the solution makes users job easy, provides seamless authentication, and saves lots of their time. But the solution is not always fruitful. There are some negative sides also. First is, what happen if your credentials hacked? Hackers can access all the resources that are protected under by technology.

Let me explain the second side with a scenario. Suppose, you are the owner of a business and you have ten different websites. You have implemented SSO solution to offer a seamless authentication experience for both users and employees. But out of ten websites, two websites are very critical and you don’t want users to authenticate that websites automatically. In this case, reduced sign-on helps you out.

Reduced sign-on is an advanced version of SSO. Let’s continue with the scenario mentioned above. With SSO, users get permission to access all the ten websites including the two that you want to exclude. But with RSO, users can login up to 8 websites but for ninth and tenth, they have to authenticate again. This is because the two websites are very sensitive and need extra protection and RSO is a method for that.

Do you ever get the feeling that customer service of your business is keeping the customers from coming back?

Sometimes, it is an employee’s awful attitude that makes you feel unwanted and unwelcomed. Or may be it is because of poor services they get, but at the end the result is the customer has no desire to return.

There are lots of reasons why customers are not interested to return like they are getting poor experience, they don’t like your products, feeling complexity in making purchase, have to invest lot of time on authentication etc. Here, I am trying to impart to companies how to keep customers coming back again and again.  

Making website authentication seamless and quick can make the half of your job done in providing great customer experience. For this businesses can implement single sign-on(SSO) solution. By permitting users to enter username and password only once to access multiple websites of same business, it simplifies the login process.

If a customer calls you with a service issue, you have to resolve the issue as soon as possible and make the customer happy. Don’t make them to return to you for the same reason. There is a name for this, first-call resolution and it is the goal of every customer service and support centers. Some companies take it one step ahead by asking questions to them to predict any future problems the customer may encounter with and then solve them as well. If they do their work well, the customer would not need to call back.

This approach can work for other types of businesses as well; it’s not just limited to call centers. Take Axe Hardware, for example. If you go into an Axe store to buy a can of paint, the sales associate will try their best that you go to your home with everything you need for your home project. The marketers will ask all the relevant questions about the project so you don’t have to come back to the store an hour or two hour later because you forgot brushes, or sticks, or drop cloths, or rollers etc. If they done their job right, you will be fully equipped to finish your home project without coming to the store again. So, when the next time if you have a project to do, where will you go? No doubt, you’ll remember the thoughtfulness of the helpful Axe employee and will like to visit the Axe Hardware again.

For businesses, in-depth knowledge about customers plays a very important role in a way to success. This knowledge not only helps marketers to create new and additional targeted methods to achieve  new customers but also to build trust in existing customers. The higher you perceive your customers the additional you will create sales and increase profits. But, from where marketers will get this precious data about their customers? What are strategies and methods that help them to induce customer’s personal data and information? Out of the numbers of methods to get this user’s data, here I am going to mention the 3 simplest and known registration processes that assist you to gather your customer’s data.

Single Sign-On

Suppose a scenario where you are working in such a company that has multiple websites and applications and you would have to login every website on an individual basis. Login each time on totally different websites is not only the wastage of time and effort but also makes you feel frustrated.

Single sign-on (SSO) solution helps you here. Implementing SSO will prevent from login every website on an individual basis. SSO will save some time and energy by permitting you to login to a website and permits you to access any website and application of the same organization.

Social Sign-On

Social sign-on is an efficient method of registration. In this technique of registration, users don't need to fill long forms that are inquiring for the name, address, age, sex and so on. Users can authenticate to a website by having their existing social media account. This reduces the time and makes the whole registration process easy and fast. The most vital advantage of social sign-on is that it provides reliable first-party user data  that's important for marketers to understand their customers more deeply.

Traditional Registration Forms

It is an old technique of getting user data. In this method, users have to fill long and sophisticated registration forms. Such forms are quite long and extremely frustrating. Generally, users leave such website that is inquiring for such registration forms to fill or just in case if users fill the forms, they create wrong entries that lead marketers to make wrong marketing strategies. But still there are a number of people who do not have the account on social media networks, therefore adding traditional registration forms along with social login is a better option.

Think about a situation where you have got a range of various website portals and mobile applications for an organisation you are working. Remembering passwords for every portal itself is a difficult task. Each portal is secured and needs to login separately. This is a very frustrating state because registering to various websites and applications is very time-consuming.

In this article, I am going to explain some of the reasons why you need to implement Single sign-on solution (SSO) to overcome the situation.

                             Single sign-on is an authentication method which allows the user to enter one account and access multiple websites and applications of the same organisation. Therefore, the user does not need to enter username and passwords each time when he/she wants to access any website of the organisation.

For example, Google has enforced SSO for their services like Gmail, Google Drive, YouTube, Google Analytics etc.

Features of SSO

Reduces Password Fatigue

It is not easy to remember numbers of passwords. You already have got a range of passwords to remember like Facebook Login, ATM password, Gmail, Skype,and so on , the list is endless. In this scenario, SSO will help you out by offering single login credentials to access multiple websites.

Reduces Time

As mentioned above by implementing SSO solution on your organisation website, you provide an easy approach to access websites to your users. Once user logged in for any of the application of your organisation, then he should automatically logged in to other applications of the same identity.

Increases Productivity

By reducing login time and stress of remembering numbers of passwords, SSO helps employees to increase productivity. Now they can focus more on their work instead of wasting their time on the registration process and another related task.

Conclusion

Single sign-on is a revolutionary tool used in authentication method that enables users to access management of multiple connected but independent applications or websites. It removes the fear of remembering numbers of passwords and username by making the login process easy by having only single ID credential. SSO is used for automating login process by using secure scripts or by using one amongst the identity protocols. Currently, there are SSO tools which will operate on the cloud or on premises or on both. There are too many options offered for implementing them. Out of them the two most used and famous protocols used to connect various applications are OpenID and SAML.

The basic difference between OpenID and SAML are as follows:

In terms of their relative performance, both the protocols differ from each other, how they act with identity suppliers and services, how they're organized in terms of enterprise or client software plays etc. Primarily SAML exchanges XML info among varied websites whereas OpenID permits customers to access single sign-on solution for varied website. Lots of internet service or application providers are using it like Google, Twitter and Yahoo etc.  In SAML single sign-on request are often initiated by either service supplier or by identity supplier however in the case of OpenID, the requests are often initiated only by the service supplier, it means that if you wish to implement SAML, you'll produce Web-based portal page that has links to varied apps that you just want to sign-in.

For different websites of the same organization, the customer or user wants to be recognized as a single person for all web properties and it is very important for businesses to provide the unified view of their customers. By unified view means if any changes made by users in any of the web property then it must be reflected in others as well. Thus, having single customer view is an important factor to offer unified customer experience. By implementing single sign-on solution you can achieve unified customer view and improves the user experience.

According to the type of your organization, there are several types of Single sign-on solutions. Here I am going to mention the three different types of single sign-on solution

Web Single Sign-On(WSSO)

WSSO is a type of single sign-on that consists of an agent that is installed on web browsers and use logics or directory to manage access control and authentication process.When a user tries to login to the web SSO enabled server or application, the web SSO agent redirects the user’s browser to authentication server where user sign-in, then it redirects to the requested web application. WSSO thus benefits users by simplifying the registration process, it also benefits organizations by reducing the cost of application support load.

Enterprise Single Sign-On(ESSO)

This  single sign-on solution is best suited for big organizations. ESSO is an appliance based SSO solution that is mainly used to solve identity management security and password management issues. It enables users to login just a single time to the network and  they get access to login to all the other applications of the same organization.

Mobile Single Sign-On