Single Sign-On SSO

Single Sign-On centralizes authentication. Instead of every app having its own username, password, and login page, the user authenticates once against a corporate identity provider — Google Workspace, Microsoft Entra ID, Okta — and the identity provider vouches for them to every connected application.

Why SSO is a security improvement, not just a convenience

The user-experience win (no more juggling 20 passwords) is the obvious benefit. The security wins are subtler but bigger:

• One MFA gate covers everything. MFA enforced at the identity provider applies to every SSO-connected app automatically.
• Offboarding is one click. Disable the user in the identity provider; their access to every app evaporates the same moment.
• Conditional access — policies like “block sign-in from unfamiliar countries” or “require managed-device check” enforce centrally instead of being reinvented per-app.
• Password sprawl drops — users have one strong password (or passkey) instead of dozens of weak, reused ones.
• Audit trail consolidates — every login is in one log, which makes incident investigation actually tractable.

How SSO works under the hood

The two dominant protocols are SAML (older, enterprise-heavy, XML-based) and OpenID Connect (newer, web-friendly, JWT-based). Most apps support both. As an admin, you configure the application to trust your identity provider and the identity provider to recognize the application — exchanging certificates, claim mappings, and redirect URLs.

For SMB environments, SSO usually means consolidating onto Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 as the identity provider and adding every SaaS app to that one provider’s app catalog. We layer Duo MFA on top for phish-resistant MFA enforcement, so the SSO login itself is the strongest gate.