Are you worried about the cyber security of your website?

You’re not alone. A recent study showed that almost three-quarters of businesses have had their websites hacked in the past year. But don’t worry, there are solutions out there that can help improve your security and compliance posture.

One such solution is SSO, or single sign-on. SSO allows employees to log in once and have access to all the applications they need, without having to remember multiple usernames and passwords. This not only improves usability for employees but also helps improve security by making it more difficult for hackers to gain access to your systems.

What is SSO and does it improve security?

When it comes to website cyber security, SSO is a valuable solution that offers many benefits for businesses and IT professionals alike. By implementing SSO, you can enjoy increased security and efficiency across different systems, making it easier to protect your site from external threats. With the right SSO software in place, you can also standardize the login experience.

Navigating Cloud Apps

As more and more companies move their data into the cloud, employees are constantly logging in to different apps. This creates a significant challenge for IT teams, as they must manage the many applications that employees use daily. There is a need to better manage security to keep up with all these changes—and user demands.

SSO Solves Key Problems for Business and IT

Security and Compliance Benefits of SSO

The main target of cybercriminals are usernames & passwords but thanks to SSO, this problem has been solved by providing an extra layer.

With SSO you’ll be able to log into all your favorite applications with just one username and password! This means that any Personal Cybersecurity Profile data is stored in the cloud and never leaves its protection. It also allows users easy access from anywhere on earth as they don’t need permission or credentials for each website/app where it’s being used – saving time during online transactions.

Improved Security

Reducing login to one set of credentials allows for a centralized security policy to be managed and controlled to provide consistency for users and improve enterprise security. When employees have to use separate passwords for each app, they usually don’t. In fact, over half use the same or similar passwords on multiple accounts, resulting in a hacker getting access to other corporate systems through one poorly secured website.

SSO Helps with Regulatory Compliance

Regulations, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, require that IT controls are documented and that organizations prove that adequate methods are in place to protect data. SSO is a core component around data access and antivirus protection.

SSO helps enforce regulatory compliance, like HIPAA. They require effective authentication of users who are accessing electronic records or who require audit controls to track activity and access. Most SSO providers retain a detailed audit log of logins and typically enforce automatic logoff of users after a predefined time lapse of inactivity.

Access management (IAM) solutions utilize a central directory that controls user access to resources at a more granular level. This allows organizations to provision users with appropriate permissions across the enterprise using SSO with role-based access control (RBAC) and security policies. This type of SSO solution can also be configured to deprovision users automatically upon termination.

SSO Improves Usability for Employees

Employees are using more and more apps in the cloud. But requiring separate usernames and passwords for each app is very onerous for employees. SSO to the rescue!

Signing in once also saves time, thus improving employee productivity. A recent study suggested that almost 70% of employees switch between 10 apps every hour. Reducing the logins to one single SSO login will save a company considerable time and money.

SSO Self-Managed Credentials

SSO lowers IT costs by saving time on password resets. When each app requires a different username and password for every employee, chances are high that employees will forget passwords resulting in the typical help desk call and/or ticket.

Having only one set of credentials to remember will significantly reduce help desk calls. SSO solutions allow users to self-manage their passwords.

The adoption of SSO solutions will improve security for enterprises, and save support costs while simplifying the security challenges users face.

Azure Active Directory (AD) External Identities

One of the more common SSO IDP (Identity Providers) is Azure. Azure Active Directory B2C, now referred to as Azure (AD) External Identities, provides business-to-customer identity as a service. Customers use their preferred social, enterprise, or local account identities to get SSO access to their applications and APIs.

Azure AD B2C is a customer identity access management (CIAM) solution capable of supporting millions of users and billions of authentications per day. It takes care of the scaling and safety of the authentication platform, monitoring, and automatically handling threats like denial-of-service, password spray, or brute force attacks.

Azure AD B2C is a separate service from Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). It is built on the same technology as Azure AD but for a different purpose. It allows businesses to build customer-facing applications, and then allow anyone to sign up for those applications with no restrictions on the user account.

Finding the right cyber security solution for you

Implementing an SSO solution is not for the faint-hearted. You need a thorough understanding of your company’s ecosystem and all connecting apps and websites that are involved in this process before implementing SSO. Solutions typically go from complete home-grown solutions to SaaS or IaaS to hybrid models. Each model should be evaluated for its ability to support a single SSO protocol that is needed to allow for apps and websites to plug into the same SSO provider. In some cases, not all apps play well and remain on their existing security platform until they can be upgraded to plug into the new SSO solution.

If you’re looking for help with this transition, consider working closely with seasoned professionals who have experience implementing SSO across various industries and settings–they’ll be able to provide your business the guidance it needs without sacrificing efficiency! To learn more about how SSO can benefit your business, contact our software solutions team.