Who are you? That’s the question, essentially, that any enterprise system asks every time an application attempts to access it. It's a question, in other words, each enterprise system must ask constantly now, for the number of applications that employees access, and the devices they use to access them, is huge and growing. This makes for a pretty scary security situation for infosec professionals. Luckily, enterprise systems and the infosec pros who secure them have single sign-on to help them out.
Single sign-on, or SSO, is the authentication process that allows users to access many apps with a single username and password. It’s a fairly simple idea: Rather than users having to remember a variety of passwords and user names, an SSO setup unifies credentials so each user only has to recall one username and password. It’s not new technology, but it is a changing one, which is the reason we’ve compiled this new guide to SSO.
Today, the best SSO system, the one that's easiest to secure, is one that can deal with cloud applications, a mobile workforce and the multiple devices each employee uses. This guide looks at SSO today, in this cloud and mobile age. In the stories linked below, some of our top security experts address what's necessary to provide the best SSO experience possible while keeping enterprise systems secure; we also offer related information on multifactor authentication, which, combined with SSO, increases enterprise system security.
Read on to get up to date on the adjustments infosec pros must make in the realm of identity management and their single sign-on systems in particular. Our aim is that this guide will leave you better equipped to provide the best SSO experience to users while securing company systems in this era of mobile workers and cloud applications.
