Identity Federation and SSO: The Fundamentals
In many software organizations, terms like authentication, SSO, and SAML are heard pretty often. Admittedly, many people will run away when hearing these terms, trying to avoid doing any authentication-related work.Â
In this article, we will go over SSO fundamentals and dive into SAML and OIDC, helping you understand why it is such a common topic and empowering you to take part in the next conversation about it!
We are all familiar with the following screen and screens alike:
The technology behind them is called SSO (Single Sign On). As the name suggests, SSO is an authentication method that allows the user to sign in once (i.e., by entering their password) and connect to multiple applications.
This authentication method is very common for both individuals (i.e., logging into a Google account) and organizations of any size (i.e., logging into GitHub or Jira using your organization’s Okta deployment). For individual users, it has the advantage of convenience — users only need to sign in once, and they only need to remember one set of credentials.Â