Single Sign-On
Provide secure and simple access to apps—anytime, anywhere.
What is SSO?
Single sign-on (SSO) allows a user to sign on with one set of credentials and gain access to multiple applications and services. SSO increases security and provides a better user experience for customers, employees and partners by reducing the number of required accounts/passwords for all the apps and services they need.
Benefits of SSO for My Business
Better Security
By making a range of resources accessible to end users with just one set of login credentials, you can reduce the volume of passwords and credentials—a highly targeted area for cyberattacks—while increasing their strength overall.
Improved User Satisfaction
SSO gives your users the ability to log in just one time and be granted seamless access to all the right applications. This means you can deliver the experience your employees and customers expect while also strengthening your security.
Lower IT Costs
A high volume of user credentials across cloud applications and on-premises networks means more password reset requests and greater security risks. SSO reduces the volume of password reset calls—lowering the cost of user administration and potential data breaches.
What Capabilities Does Ping SSO Offer?
Ping's SSO solution enables:
Easily configurable SSO and identity federation
Registration, profile management and password reset
Adaptive authentication policies
Social login and account linking
How Does SSO Work?
Centralized Authentication
Single sign-on (SSO) is made possible by a centralized authentication service that all apps—even third-party apps—can use to confirm a user’s identity.
Token-Based Permissions
Identity standards like SAML, OAuth and OpenID Connect allow for encrypted tokens to be transmitted securely between the server and the apps.
Access to Everything
Ping’s SSO capabilities serve as a global authentication authority that allows any user to securely access all the applications they need from any device.
SSO vs. Federated SSO: What's the Difference?
Federated SSO is a more advanced version of single sign-on (SSO). Federated SSO means your end users need just one strong password to gain access to all the right SaaS applications and resources, whether the asset is owned by your enterprise or a third party. Yet, while federated SSO automatically enables SSO, SSO alone does not have all the capabilities of federated SSO.
The Unparalleled Flexibility of Federated SSO
Ping’s federated SSO solution is designed to integrate with a range of identity providers and third-party applications old and new, all while supporting current and past versions of identity standards like OAuth, OpenID Connect, SAML and WS-Federation.
This flexibility enables our customers to:
Meet today’s security and authentication needs whether on-premises or in the cloud
Ensure interoperability between unique identity systems, web resources, organizations and vendors
Build a secure, future-proofed identity architecture that stands the test of time
What is SAML-Enabled Federated SSO?
Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is the most common protocol used to enable federated SSO deployments across large enterprises and government agencies. That’s why Ping’s own enterprise federation server has been extensively tested for interoperability against a number of other SAML implementations.
A SAML-certified product can mean the difference between a simple two-hour configuration and QA or a costly, multi-month distributed debugging nightmare.
Enable SSO Across IT Applications, Old and New
Many enterprises have legacy applications with proprietary identity flows and authentication protocols, or they have systems built before modern identity standards were developed.
Ping’s SSO capabilities serve as a bridge across these applications, allowing companies to securely connect their customers and employees to these older applications via SSO in addition to newer applications such as Salesforce or Office 365.
Ping Products that Deliver SSO
PingOne for Customers
SSO is part of a complete cloud solution for seamless and secure customer experiences
PingOne for Workforce
SSO is part of a complete cloud solution for seamless, secure employee experiences
Identity Cloud
Raise the bar with the IAM cloud purpose-built for enterprise
PingFederate
Cloud-ready software for authentication and single sign-on authority
Access Management
With the right solution, going passwordless is quite easy. See how you can reduce friction and improve security
Fast and Simple SSO Integrations
Out-of-the-box integrations make it simpler to provide SSO to your existing third-party applications like Office 365 and web technologies like Apache and Java. You’ll have SSO access to your applications (even the hard-to-integrate internal applications) in hours or days, not weeks or months.
SSO Integration Highlights
Customer Spotlight:
VSP Vision Care Sees Satisfaction Soar When Clients Use Single Sign-On
VSP liked the way that Ping Identity enabled them to use established social identities to register and connect users to portal apps. Ping Identity offers Cloud Identity Connectors that can be set up easily. Plus, Ping Identity eliminated all the barriers on the VSP side to offer SSO access to every web portal.
More SSO Success Stories To Explore:
Learn how easy it was for WGU to replace OpenSSO with Ping solutions.
CDPHP chose Ping to provide members secure and seamless access to all aspects of their health plan.
SSO FAQs
When using SSO, an access token is used in place of a username and password to sign in to an application. An access token contains encrypted bits of data that confirm the user's identity and privileges.
Yes. SSO offers a secure way for users to access multiple related applications without having to re-enter their credentials every time. This reduces the number of opportunities for a bad actor to take advantage of a compromised password since each user only has to sign on once. SSO systems also exchange secure access tokens, rather than sending passwords back and forth, keeping the sensitive information more secure.
The process of implementing SSO can vary depending on the solution you are using and what you need the solution to do. Get in touch with Ping Identity to help you find the right solution and discuss the steps to get SSO implemented.
Although you may hear single sign-on (SSO) and federated identity management (FIM) frequently used together, they are not synonymous. SSO enables access to applications and resources within a single domain. FIM enables SSO to applications across multiple domains or organizations. Another type you may hear about is cloud SSO. Cloud SSO provides centralized access management and lets users authenticate their cloud-based applications and services with a single identity for trusted providers.
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