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This article is to share with you about the issues that need to be considered in the introduction of SSO, the editor thinks it is very practical, so I share it with you to learn. I hope you can get something after reading this article.

Single sign-on (single sign-on,SSO) provides a simple but secure authentication process that no longer requires employees to enter passwords on a daily basis. It enables users to select a set of credentials to access multiple accounts and services. So how can organizations best use SSO for their purposes?

The authentication scheme works with the assistance of a dedicated SSO policy server. When a user attempts to authenticate, the server sends the user's credentials back to the agent module on the application. SSO also verifies the identity of users against a list of approved users. In this way, the service can authenticate users across all accounts and applications. Then, when the user tries to access the accounts and applications in these ranges again, it will not need to verify the password.

To do this, organizations first need to have a clear understanding of SSO.

Advantages and challenges of SSO

SSO brings many benefits to the organization. Four of them are particularly important:

Reduce password fatigue. "password fatigue" usually occurs when users need to remember the passwords of multiple accounts and websites. This fatigue is characterized by users reusing passwords between multiple accounts, thus saving them from remembering many different passwords. By doing so, they can open themselves up and take the risk of password reuse attacks by expanding their organization. SSO solves this problem by reducing the number of passwords that users need to remember. As a result, users can more easily create and remember strong passwords based on SSO policies.

Help the administrator. The fact that users don't have to remember so many passwords through SSO can also help administrators. When employees forget their passwords, they will put a burden on administrators in the form of "getting their passwords back". However, under SSO, users are more likely to remember their passwords, which allows administrators to focus on other tasks. This includes using SSO to securely provide access to resources hosted locally, in the cloud, or across hybrid cloud environments.

Assist in compliance work. With SSO, organizations can more effectively control employee access to certain types of information. When combined with easier password change policies, this feature helps organizations achieve and maintain compliance with regulations such as HIPAA and SOX.

Prevent shadow IT (shadow IT). The term "shadow IT" refers to information assets that are purchased or managed outside the regular processes of the IT department. It poses a threat to the organization. Without IT supervision, employees may share too much information with assets or devices that may not have proper protection. IT administrators can use SSO to guard against this risk by monitoring the whitelist of applications that employees are allowed to use.

In addition to the benefits discussed above, organizations face important challenges in implementing SSO. It includes the following points:

Single point of failure. If an attacker destroys its SSO solution or provider, the organization's connected system may be compromised. Similarly, if attackers break a user's device or a single password for SSO, they may gain access to their associated account.

Implementation issues. The IT infrastructure of the enterprise is becoming more and more complex. Not only that, employees of different departments and teams also have different SSO requirements. They need access to resources and assets that may not apply to other employees or other departments. This makes it difficult to create SSO policies that apply to all employees.

Reliability issues. When implemented, SSO constitutes the only way for authenticated users to access organizational applications. When there is a connection problem, it is usually a factor of failure. When this happens, complexity can make it difficult for an organization to determine what is happening. At the same time, companies can cope with downtime, which limits employee productivity and leads to tension among business partners.

Adopt the challenge. Organizations use SSO to enhance their information security and provide users with a more convenient login process. Even so, the SSO solution may need to change the way users behave in order to authenticate successfully. Changing regular work practices may prompt users to try to bypass the SSO tool. Subsequently, this resistance may affect SSO integration across the organization more generally.

Issues to be considered

Fortunately, security professionals can optimize an organization's SSO implementation in a way that helps minimize these risks. They need to consider the following issues:

"how to minimize the single point of failure caused by SSO?"

The point of failure of SSO depends on the attacker's access to steal employee passwords. Acknowledge that in reality, security personnel can eliminate a single point of failure by providing multiple layers of protection by using additional security controls.

They should first require all employees to use two-factor authentication or multi-factor authentication methods, regardless of which account is authorized under the organization's SSO policy. These measures will protect access to the employee's connected account when someone gains access to their credentials. Security personnel can supplement this feature by implementing the principle of least privilege. This limits the types of services, accounts, and information that attackers can access, provided they can successfully authenticate themselves in a corporate environment. In order to implement the least privilege policy on its endpoints, automatically cycle passwords, and record privileged session activity, organizations should also consider investing in privileged account management solutions.

From there, security experts can use active Directory controls to track all external access sessions on the network. This will help them detect suspicious connections or network activity.

"how will it be affected when the service is interrupted?"

SSO solutions help maintain information security within the organization. These tools protect data integrity by limiting the types of resources that users can access. In addition, they ensure confidentiality by protecting the applications responsible for storing data. Finally, they ensure availability by providing applications, PC, and other assets if employees forget their credentials.

Given the security features of SSO, organizations need to pay attention to the possibility of downtime. Organizations need to work with service providers to assess how connection failures affect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of their systems.

Not only that, organizations should also incorporate their SSO solutions into their vulnerability management programs. SSO tools, like any other software program, may have security vulnerabilities. The security team needs to pay attention to these issues and prioritize patches accordingly. Otherwise, they may run the risk of malicious actors abusing these loopholes to steal sensitive information from the organization.

"what should we do when the SSO connection is disconnected?"

During implementation, the SSO solution may lose connectivity, potentially disrupting the business. It is important that security professionals develop a plan just in case.

The security team does not need to plan SSO outages during downtime. In fact, they should consult different departments to create an overall disaster recovery strategy that takes SSO into account. They can then use the discrete steps of the strategy to cause the organization to experience SSO outages, thereby building its network resilience to similar events.

"do we have a plan to cover all employees?"

The last thing security professionals need to address is the inability to continuously manage SSO solutions. In the absence of direct supervision, the security team may not be able to include employees in the SSO policy when hiring them, thus exposing the organization to some of these risks. Conversely, if they fail to revoke their credentials after an individual leaves the company, that person can use their details to retain access to the organization's network or data for a long time away from the company.

In other words, security professionals need to ensure that a policy is developed that covers the entire organizational time of the employee. This strategy should specifically include training employees on how to use and register SSO solutions for the first time. When the employee's visit requirements or positions in the organization change, you should also set aside space to manage and update the employee's SSO requirements. The plan should detail the necessary procedures for revoking an individual's credentials from the SSO solution after his or her departure. Finally, he should revoke their access to all other digital assets that may not be covered by the organization's SSO deployment.

The above are the issues that need to be considered in the introduction of SSO, and the editor believes that there are some knowledge points that we may see or use in our daily work. I hope you can learn more from this article. For more details, please follow the industry information channel.

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