It’s easy to spot a business blessed with the benefits of SSO, also called Cloud Single Sign On. The people look healthy, happy, and smug enough to have stepped out of a vegan recipe box ad. And that’s because Cloud SSO packs a whole shedload of benefits, not just for your cybersecurity compliance officer but for the actual humans that do the work.
Also, we love vegans, and some of us love animals the right way, i.e., we don’t eat them. Vegans, please don’t hurt us.
Moving on.
So, Remind Me, What’s Cloud SSO?
Delighted you asked. Cloud SSO is an authentication tool that allows you to sign in to multiple cloud-based resources simultaneously, using a single login. It’s a web application that sits between you, beavering away on your device, and all the Cloud accounts and apps you use for work.
Let’s say you use Slack, Dropbox, a bit of Google, maybe some weirdass cloud accounting software, probably a cloud-based app called “Sneddo” that your IT guru created for that thing your company does, and DocuSign.
Without Cloud SSO, you’ll be logging into each and every one of those accounts. You’ll forget your password for at least three of them every second Tuesday. All those logins flapping around are also giving your IT guru a stress rash.
With the benefits of SSO, however, you only need to log in once, through the Cloud SSO web app screen. Kapow! You’re straight into a pretty dashboard containing all your cloud accounts. Just click and go!
Is Cloud SSO Actually Evil Magic?
Nope, it’s just good tech. SSO is a component of a concept called Federated Identity Management. It’s the gatekeeper between a Service Provider (e.g., Dropbox) and an Identity Provider, which stores and manages your digital identity. It’s a bit like a club bouncer, that checks if you’re on the list. If you’re not, you can’t come in.
Here Are 6 Benefits of SSO
Cloud SSO it’s one of those little things in life that punches way above its weight, in a trite-idiom way. The business benefits are serious, and here are six of our favorite ones:
1. Access Control
You might not care about this, but your IT governance and compliance people do. Access control is a significant principle baked into pretty much every compliance framework or regime, such as SOC 2, SEC, and ISO 27001. Cloud SSO allows your IT compliance people to restrict access to apps and data only to those who need to use it. Restricting access increases data security, and that’s a good thing for any business.
2. Cast Iron Audit Trails
Again with the compliance. Any business needs to know what, if any, corporate mischief is afoot. Cloud SSO tracks who’s logging into what and when. Audit trails are also often required by compliance regimes, so that’s another compliance hoop set on fire, kicked to death, and drowned.
3. Better Password Management
Single Sign On. There’s a clue in the name. When you need to remember only one password and username for all your accounts, there’s less chance you’ll forget it. And with only one password to remember, you can make it a super-strong, non-hackable one. Yay! This also eliminates password fatigue—using the same or super-guessable variations of your dog/child Kipper’s name and birthday—to log into all your accounts.
Fewer passwords mean greater security and reduced risk of a data breach. It also means your IT helpdesk won’t be inundated with requests for new passwords. They have better things to do than that.
4. Multi-level Security
Woah, there! Isn’t a single log-in a bit dangerous? If a baddie gets hold of it, they’ll be able to access all your accounts! This is madness. Hasn’t anyone thought of this already?
Be not afraid because your IT person has had fun reinforcing that SSO gateway with many security layers such as:
- Multi-factor authentication: Yep, you still have to prove that you’re you.
- Enforcing good password practice: If your data security policy dictates that employees must change their password whenever Cloud SSO makes them do that. No new password? No entry.
- Restating credentials: IT admins can use SSO to require employees to re-enter their credentials after a time to ensure that the user at the device is still the authorized person, not the user’s five-year-old niece.
5. Superquick Onboarding
Cloud SSO contributes to the speed and beauty of conditional access or BYOB onboarding because, once your new hire has entered their credentials and it’s verified by the process, they’ll have access to all the tools, resources, and comms they need to feel welcome, valuable and productive. And they’ll be under the impression they’ve joined a company that appears to know what it’s doing. SSO means an excellent first day and shorter learning curve for them, and higher productivity levels for you.
6. Easy-Peasy Provisioning
The last thing your new hire wants to see on their first day is a screenful of weird and scary apps that have nothing to do with their role. SSO eliminates the “holy monkey of god, what am I supposed to do with all those apps” anxiety by allowing your IT admin/HR guru combo to assign to your newbie only the things they need for their role.
This is the other side of the access control coin. And, of course, when it’s time for your newbie (oldbie? No idea) to leave, your friendly IT admin can easily deprovision and close all those cloud accounts, leaving no account hanging open waiting for a salivating, opportunist hacker.
Cloud SSO: Something Else You Need To Know
Don’t forget to check your service providers’ (e.g., Dropbox) attitude to SSO.
Cloud SSO is a beneficial business tool that’s easy to implement and will make your business happy. Sadly, it also makes some service providers happy, because they think that data security is a luxury rather than an essential. So they may charge you extra for enjoying SSO. We’re not saying you should check out this Wall of Shame to find out who’s cashing in, but that’s exactly what we’re saying.
Don’t panic, because many service providers are right-headed enough to view SSO as a standard and an encouraging part of business compliance, meaning they won’t charge you extra. And we’ve found a few ethical ways to get around the sneaky ones.
What Can You Get Out of Cloud SSO?
In case we’ve not been clear enough, Cloud SSO is a fundamental business security and productivity tool from which every business can benefit. It doesn’t matter if your business is entirely office-based, remote, or some unblessed hybrid—Cloud SSO makes compliance, onboarding, and productivity a whole lot easier.
If you’re confused about the options or want to learn more about the benefits of SSO, give us a call. We’re here to help.