#sso types

Single sign-on is not a new concept. It has been well known for its capabilities for several years in the digital world. Single sign-on(SSO)  has become the necessity for website owners who want to provide an easy and quick user authentication to their online business websites. It can not be ignored today, businesses are implementing the solution at an alarming rate. If you still don’t know about the awesome technology, don’t worry, I will give you a deep insight on SSO and its different types.

What is Single Sign-On?

Isn’t it surprising that you enter a single username and password and get the permission to access multiple websites of a business?  The same as Google is doing for its products. With Single sign-on, user gets the access to login to all the websites of the same business. It makes the whole web authentication process simple and fast. That means the numbers of web services and applications, but only single username and password to remember.

Single Sign-On Types:

There are many types of SSO, but businesses need to choose the right one according to their business size and the one that best suits their business. Some of the types of SSO are as following:

Web Single Sign-On(WSSO)

WSSO also known as unique web authentication because it allows users to access web applications that require web authentication via SSO.  There  are many benefits of WSSO like it reduces the need of passwords and also saves users time.

Federated Single Sign-On

If you have a business and customers need to login other websites that are related to the products that you are offering, then Federated SSO is the best alternative for your business. It allows users to login to website across heterogeneous domains.

Container based Single Sign-On:

It is also called limited kind of single sign-on because the solution is only used within the same container. That means users authentication credentials are only shared across the web services that are deployed on the same server.

The Single sign-on solution is the safe and secure alternative to credential loss. Single sign-on(SSO) helps to attach multiple domains and websites of the same organization along to form seamless user login experience.

Implementing single sign-on reduces the time spent by the user to login for various websites of same the organization, so will increase the productivity. SSO improves the user experience and removes the need of memorizing numbers of passwords. With the assistance of single ID credentials, users can login to multiple applications and websites. Single sign-on is classified  into numerous types.

Here I’m going to discuss some of the most important kinds of single sign-on.

Enterprise Single Sign-On

It is one among the foremost type of SSO, particularly for large organizations. It’s active directory based SSO solution that allows users to use current identities and has management for the whole enterprise without needing any further authentication process. It will increase productivity by eliminating the necessity of IT service support.

Container Based Single Sign-On

It is one among the most important and limited type of single sign-on, because it will be used across the applications within the same container as the name suggests.  In this kind, authentication ID credentials will be shared between 2 web application that's deployed on the same application server.

Web Single Sign-On(WSSO)

Web single sign-on permits users to access number of  internet servers that requires authentication by having unique website authentication. With the assistance of WSSO, users do not need to remember different passwords for web services that are using multiple technologies. The WSSO facilitates users by providing seamless website access and helps organizations by reducing the application and web support load.

Federation SSO

Federation Single sign-on is an important type of SSO because it is designed to enable SSO between two trusted partners across heterogeneous domains. Federation permits these sure partners to ask for identity details and data within a circle of trust by using a set of open protocols. It's almost like WSSO except the authentication is allowable across same domains in web SSO whereas in federation it's allowable across completely different domains.

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