10 Benefits of SSO and Why It's Important for Your Business

Cloud has increased the usage of a multitude of business applications, with no sign of slowing down. The average enterprise uses over 1,000 distinct cloud services. And with hundreds to thousands of employees accessing multiple accounts every day, that translates to a lot of passwords to keep track of and protect. ?

In this article, you will read about:

What is SSO??

How does Single Sign-on work??

Benefits of Single Sign-On?

How Rainbow Secure SSO can help??

If you run any type of business, you'll likely be aware that there are a number of applications that are required for business-critical tasks. To name a few:?

• CRMs: ?which help you track leads and convert them to deals.?
• Collaboration solutions: to help you stay connected with your team.?
• Bookkeeping apps: to help do your accounting.?
• Marketing apps: to run your social media and email campaigns.?
• Analytics apps: to help you collate and consume data from across multiple sources.?

Securely managing thousands of accounts and associated user data is a challenge for both users and IT administrators. ??

So, what's the solution? How do you manage an organization and employees whose app usage will only continue to grow??

Single sign-on (SSO) is one solution enterprise organizations use to enhance their IT security, improve user experience, and reduce costs. SSO is becoming a common practice in modern business because of how easy it makes user authentication and password management. It’s a simple, quick, and easy way to remember and store passwords without having to enter them each time you try to access your account, minimizing workplace anxiety developed from having to remember various passwords.?

What is SSO??

Single Sign-On (SSO) is an enterprise user authentication tool that enables users to log in to and access multiple applications, websites, and data using just one set of credentials (username and password). ?

SSO is a popular identity management solution for enterprises that want to reduce security risks surrounding user data, improve the user experience, and streamline IT management and login processes.?

How does Single Sign-on work??

SSO simplifies the process of login and authentication for enterprise users. ?

Here’s how SSO works:?

• You (the user) request access to a site or application.?

?The site checks to see if your identity has been authenticated with the SSO provider. If yes, the site grants you access. If not, you are redirected to the SSO login to input your credentials (i.e., username and password). ?

• You enter your login info. ?
• The SSO solution requests authentication from the identity provider your company uses.?
• The identity provider confirms your identity to the SSO solution.?
• The SSO solution confirms your identity to the original website and redirects you to the site.?
• As you navigate through the website, the site tracks you from page to page using tokens, reauthenticating your identity as you go.?
• If you go to another website or application, that site will check your identity with the SSO solution. Since you already logged in, your identity is automatically verified with the new site and you don’t have to log in again.?? ?

SSO works a little like a passport. For example, if you go to catch a flight, the TSA agent doesn’t have to know you personally or check you against an internal list to confirm your identity. Your identity has already been verified by a central authority (i.e., the state or federal government). ?

Similarly, when you try to access a website, the SSO system vouches for your identity. It’s already done the heavy lifting of authentication so the website can trust you.? ?

Benefits of Single Sign-On?

Without SSO, authentication is conducted by each website or application separately. To do this, the site must maintain its own private database of user credentials.?

For enterprises using a combination of cloud applications and on-premise networks, the sheer volume of user data can be overwhelming. IT must store and manage separate login credentials for each enterprise user (e.g., employees, contractors, and clients), for every single website, program, or application in the system. This situation poses a few problems, including security risks, high management costs, and inefficiency. ?

That’s where the benefits of SSO come in. SSO helps enterprises with the following:?

1. Employee and IT productivity growth?

Authentication processes play an integral role in the ecosystem of your organization. The larger your business becomes; the more authentication data needs to be processed and stored.?

In companies implementing strict password policies, simple login processes can take much longer than usual. Users will have to take out their password lists, scan through them, and slowly key in each character into the password field. If the login fails, they'd have to check if they missed a character or keyed in the wrong password.?

And if they fail more than thrice, they might have to call Help Desk and request a password reset. That's going to cost them some precious minutes. Worse, if the Help Desk is inundated with calls, those users may have to put some tasks (including the important ones) on hold.?

Having to remember and key in only one password can significantly cut down login time and reduce the chances of a failed login. Thus, SSO can enable users to get back to work right away.?

Single sign-on increases employee productivity by reducing the time they must spend signing on and dealing with passwords. Employees need access to many apps throughout their workday, and they have to spend time logging in to each of them, plus trying to remember which password goes to which, plus changing and resetting passwords when one is forgotten. The wasted time adds up.??

Users with just one password to access all of their apps can skip all that extra time spent logging in. They also won't need password support as often, and SSO solutions often give them access to a handy dock where all their apps are at their fingertips.?

What’s more, a growing number of employees’ credentials may lead to lots of time spent instead of focusing on major tasks and key goals.?

2. Risk-Based Authentication (RBA)?

As we have mentioned above, each user utilizing the SSO credentials gets a unique token required by both the Service and Identity provider to facilitate the authentication process.?

This scheme becomes even more secure by integrating it with risk-based authentication. This means that your team can monitor user activity and monitor all potential unusual behavior like new IPs, changed DNS providers, multi-login attempts, location change, login at irregular time intervals and many more.?

This way, you can protect your corporate or customer data by offering extra identification verification. Once failed, the system denies access to a user and blocks his data like an IP, DNS, hardware, and other parameters to secure your system.?

In short, risk-based authentication empowers your business to minimize or even avoid cyberattacks, sensitive data draining, and others.?

3. Decreased IT Costs?

A recent study by Gartner reveals over 50 percent of all help desk calls are due to password issues. Another study by Forrester reveals password resets cost organizations upward of $70 per fix. The more passwords a user has, the greater the chance of forgetting them, so SSO drives down help desk costs by reducing the number of required passwords to just one. ?

And some organizations have been implementing specific password requirements like length and special characters that may make passwords more difficult for users to remember—a tradeoff of more secure passwords for more password resets. Learn about graphical multi-layer Rainbow Password authentication. SSO can help alleviate some of those costs.?

Also, since single sign-on service reduces the number of login credentials an individual has to remember, users are unlikely to send a password reset ticket to the IT team. Gartner says that 20%-50% of all IT helpdesk requests are credentials-related. Needless to say, these tickets are costly. The enterprise wants to reduce it at all costs, and SSO helps you do that with ease.?

4. Password fatigue decrease?

Most modern organizations, platforms, and services recommend users generate unique passwords for each account. This may create lots of trouble as employees and users should write them down or even keep them in mind to be secure enough.?

As a result, you can encounter the so-called ‘password fatigue’. How does it work and hurt your company??

For example, you have a software product and hundreds or thousands of users that log in daily to access the functionality you provide. The more login trouble they face, the higher the chances of losing existing customers or potential clients as they may just leave your website or app in favor of another competitor.?

According to the Baymard Institute study, 18.75 percent of Amazon users leave their carts?with chosen items because of forgotten passwords or failed password reset attempts.?

This way, the core benefits of single sign on allow you to avoid password fatigue issues and provide an excellent user experience to customers. ?

5. Improved security?

As enterprise computing grows, the risks to security and compliance do too. Today, many organizations work with both cloud and on-premise applications. Navigating and managing data across those environments is complex and can get dicey quickly. ?

For instance, when employees have to keep track of multiple login credentials, they tend to create passwords that are easy to remember and similar to each other. While this makes it easier to access their accounts quickly, it also poses a threat to security. Additionally, if you are hosting and managing user identity data on your own systems, your organization is a bigger target for hackers looking to access valuable user data. ???

SSO reduces those security risks. Users no longer have to keep track of dozens of passwords and enterprises can offload sensitive data to their third-party SSO platform.?

6. Regulations and compliance compatibility?

Regulatory compliance is a must-have attribute for any business that wants to successfully operate in the modern digital world. The SSO login helps your enterprise with compliance issues, too.?

The single sign-on helps you with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and more importantly, PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard)?requiring well-documented IT controls, effective user authentication, audit controls to track activity and access, automatic logoff, and many others. Failure to adhere to such a requirement can lead to hefty fines and other not-so-good repercussions like losing the trust of partners, clients, or even employees.

SSO helps you comply with the laid-out regulations in the grand scheme of things, thus ensuring effective access reporting and secure file sharing.?

7. Enhances user experience?

One of the most valuable benefits of implementing SSO is an enhanced customer experience. A recent study reveals up to 18.75% of users abandon their carts because of password reset issues or forgotten passwords. Whether you’re a retailer, a healthcare provider or a bank offering multiple services, SSO will help you alleviate these issues and give your customers access to everything they need with just one sign-on. They’ll enjoy a more seamless experience with less friction and less frustration. The immediate benefits of improved user experiences include customer loyalty, higher conversion rates and enhanced brand visibility.?

8. Prevents Shadow IT?

Shadow IT is not new to the world of cybersecurity. It refers to unauthorized downloads in the workplace. In the past, Shadow IT was limited to employees purchasing software at office supply stores. But as cloud-based downloads become more popular, the potential for risk grows.?

To solve this issue, IT admins can leverage SSO to monitor what apps employees use. Thus, identity theft risks can be thwarted. With a single platform, a company’s IT or compliance team can ensure that global and local compliance rules are being followed, as well.?

9. Increases software adoption rates?

Making sign-up or login easier with SSO increases the chance that customers will adopt your technology, use your app, and keep returning for more.?

Because of their length and complexity, even a single password can be almost impossible to recall. To make matters worse, users these days have to access 5 to even 20 applications per day. That means, more passwords to remember - and likely forget. No wonder Help Desks are being bombarded with so many password reset requests.?

One benefit of SSO is it will allow your users to remember just one password or at least much fewer passwords (since you may still have non-SSO-enabled applications), reduce the chances of forgotten passwords, and consequently bring down your Help Desk costs.?

10. Facilitates B2B collaboration?

Many products are built through collaborative endeavors between partner companies.?To make this happen, some enterprises allow trading partners, service providers, suppliers, and affiliates access not only to their data but also to certain company-owned applications through extranets. As a result, certain users in these organizations have to log in to multiple applications; some belonging to their organization, and others to their business partners.?

Implementing authentication and authorization mechanisms in large extranets, wherein you can have various users coming in and logging into all these shared applications, can be very tricky.?

This can be resolved by implementing a Single Sign-On system. With SSO, businesses can centralize the management of authentication and enable users to log in once and then instantly gain access to all participating partners' shared applications. In turn, this will allow those users to perform their duties in a fraction of the time. By accelerating collaboration, businesses can significantly reduce production time and deliver products and services on schedule.?

How Rainbow Secure SSO can help??

Rainbow Secure SSO is a popular graphical strong authentication solution for enterprises who want to reduce security risks, and liabilities surrounding user data, improve the user experience and streamline IT management and login processes. Rainbow Secure SSO provides: ?

• Rich User Experience?

Give your workforce an interactive graphical security experience everywhere - online, on-prem, and even in the cloud at all major enterprise Apps and cloud platforms.?

No more login stress. Colors and styles make users happy and productive. Users authenticate and verify without any hardware, usb keys or app dependencies.?

• Unified Access to All Resources?

Unify access for all of your apps — cloud and on-prem, third party and custom built — into one enterprise-wide portal for your end users, providing them with seamless remote access from any device using just one login. ?

Make it simpler for users, easy to manage by IT, and strong enough to secure your business with the Rainbow secure single sign-on?

• Seamless, Pre-Built Integrations?

Rainbow Secure Single Sign-on works with all major enterprise Apps (Microsoft Office, Sharepoint, Teams, VPN, Google, AWS, Slack, Zoom, Salesforce etc.) and custom homegrown applications.?

Rainbow Secure helps you integrate your IAM with other key-leading access control and anti-fraud solutions as demanded by your use cases.?

Next Generation Rainbow Secure platform is a modern identity and single sign-on solution for your business across on-premises and cloud environments. It's backed by an experienced team of cloud and security experts, years of innovation, and partnerships with leading cloud platforms. Rainbow Secure is a Leader in Smart and Secure Digital Solutions that work for you.??

Secure Workforce & Customer Login Use Authentication Plug-in by Rainbow Secure to secure workforce and customer logins. In this plug-in, you get a multi-dimensional password, passwordless login solutions with AI monitoring, Risk Analytics, and location fencing.??

Meet Compliance Requirements: Use Authentication Plug-in by Rainbow Secure with your business application and in SSO (Single Sign-on) and meet industry standards and compliance regulations such as NIST, ISO, FTC, SOX, SOC2, CMMC, CMMI, HIPAA, PCI, and others.??

Securely communicate and Collaborate: Use Secure Business Email by Rainbow Secure and get protection against account takeover, phishing, ransomware, and automated login cyber frauds. In this email, you get options to send encrypted emails, single sign-on with Office 365, and Google, and 1 TB one drive storage.??

Connect Business applications: Get one unified login using Rainbow Secure Single Sign-On???

Manage User Onboarding / OffBoarding using Rainbow Secure IAM??

Verify User using Smart Multi-factor MFA?

Do you have more questions about our unique SSO solution? Contact us today. Email us at [email protected]?