Have you heard of single sign-on? Looking to explore if it could be beneficial to your business? Read this blog to have your questions answered about single sign-on and what it can do for your business.
Single Sign-on (SSO) is an authentication service that allows a user to utilize a single username and password to log into many applications. With SSO, the application the user wants to access verifies the login credentials with a third-party app to grant the user access. This causes a more streamlined process for your company to interact with third-party applications. Read more down below about SSO and if it is a solution that could benefit you and your company!
An Example of How Single Sign-On Works
When you go to a website and you would like to login, a set of options for authentication appears. These options can be from third parties that may not be related to the website such as Facebook, Google, and Linkedin. When you pick one of the third parties, the third party will go and authenticate you based on their database and send a token back to the website you are trying to access. Finally, the website you are trying to access then receives the token, verifying your identity. With this token, your login will be associated with your third-party account. Once associated, the SSO will redirect you to whatever you were trying to access.
Why use Single Sign-On?
SSO can be somewhat daunting if your company has never used it before. One benefit is that it streamlines the user’s login experience. Your company’s staff can finally stop juggling various login credentials and the constant scramble to find the right username and password. Another reason is to lessen password fatigue. With the addition of a multitude of SaaS applications becoming increasingly relevant in the workplace, the more login credentials user’s own, the less complex passwords they tend to have. SSO can improve the usability of your program suite and help reduce IT costs and provide greater password security for your company as a whole.
Benefits of Single Sign-On
Boosted Productivity
Having all your staff’s applications located in one portal will increase productivity throughout your company. Your staff just needs to login at one location to access all the applications need for their workday. Even though logging into applications may not seem like a long tedious process, over time, your staff may log in many times and the time spent filling in credentials adds up. Your company could increase efficiency by just decreasing the amount of time it takes to log in. According to LastPass in 2017, the average business employee has approximately 191 passwords. As you can imagine, having an SSO can greatly decrease the amount of stress and hassle it takes from remembering all 191 passwords.
Bad Passwords Begone
When users have too many login credentials in their life, they start to get lazy with making up new passwords. Password fatigue is the feeling of having to remember an excessive number of passwords in their daily life. It is a serious problem in today’s world of ever-increasing pushes for security and privacy online. With SSO, users are less likely to write, forget, or make bad passwords as there is only one login credential. Consequently, system security increases with SSO due to a decrease in bad passwords in the system.
Increased Security
Employees in your company can be happy that login data is not stored in a database in plain text for hackers to easily steal. With an SSO, staff can securely login to applications without fearing their credentials being stolen. This also reduces the risk of your company’s website being hacked as none of login credentials exist on the website at all. If there is a hack on your company’s website, the database of usernames and passwords are not located on your site at all, keeping your company credentials safe.
Lower Desk Costs
Saving money is always a good thing. With a reduced number of passwords needed to remember for work, a great amount of money is saved. Forrester Research released a study showing that the average cost of resetting a single password using a help desk is around $70. In addition to Forrester, Gartner also found through research that 20-50% of all help desk calls are for password resets. By eliminating most of these calls to the help desk, a significant amount of money could be saved.
Onboarding for New Employees
With SSO, it is easy for new employees to adopt company software. With the reduction of passwords, onboarding new employees has never been easier. As all your staff’s programs are located in one place, the incentive to try other programs diminishes. This will make your company’s workflow very smooth and streamlined. With a streamlined application toolbox, the risk of shadow IT (when employees use programs that are not mandated or controlled by the IT department) increases. Also, with the addition of SSO, your IT department can determine who has access to what programs very easily.
Easier B2B Collaboration
With SSO, B2B collaboration is much easier. With all the programs inside an SSO, the information inside this program suite can be easily transferred. SSO is at its peak functionality when users need to integrate information with a wide range of applications or platforms. Having different workplace applications working in harmony becomes much easier as SSO supports secure file sharing and effective access reporting.
Having a Single Sign-on system can be greatly beneficial for your company. Integrating different software on one unified platform can streamline many processes and greatly increase efficiency. With our brand-new integration with SSO providers, Celayix can help your business schedule employees in an efficient and effective manner.
