What is Single Sign-on and How It Helps Productivity

Between the multi-step authentications, increasingly complex captchas, and the fact that special characters are now a normal password requirement, staying safe online has become, well, kind of a burden. And not just for end-users, but also the IT department, the business, and the bottom line. 

See, when employees can’t remember their passwords, it impacts productivity — they can’t access the tools they need to perform day-to-day tasks. For IT, that means  many working hours are lost to handling user credential issues. In turn, organizations spend more on activities that don’t generate any value for the business or its customers. 

Credential issues may seem like a small inconvenience — after all, managing a bunch of passwords is annoying. But the reality is, problems with logins, passwords, and lockouts have a negative impact the entire business. 

Single sign-on, or SSO, aims to solve those problems by allowing users to securely access multiple apps and services with one set of login credentials. 

In this short video, Velosio cloud engineers, Brian Buckeye and Joe Baines provide a simple overview of single sign-on, how it works, and the benefits it brings to the table.

Here’s a quick overview of what’s covered in the video:

• What single sign-on is and how it enables users to log into multiple apps with one set of credentials
• How SSO improves security, productivity, and the overall sign-in experience
• How users can enable single sign-on across multiple apps via Azure Active Directory (AD)
• How SSO in Azure helps orgs migrate applications to the cloud without cutting off existing access permissions

You can watch the full video here – or keep reading to learn more about the business impact of SSO beyond the IT department. 

Why you should care about Single Sign-on

Single sign-on is one of those capabilities that, on the surface, seems to exist simply because, well, people hate dealing with passwords. However – once you start scratching at that surface, you’ll find that SSO – when enabled in Azure AD – unlocks some seriously transformative benefits for your business.

As Brian and Joe mentioned in the video, Microsoft users can configure SSO via Azure AD to grant users the ability to sign in to all apps and services linked to their Microsoft account (including third-party and ISV solutions) with one set of credentials. 

That means organizations can provide secure access to apps and services from anywhere —  with a unified identity management solution that provides seamless, secure collaboration with employees, clients, and partners. 

For example, AccountabilIT, an IT and cybersecurity services firm implemented Azure AD to eliminate the excessive provisioning involved with each customer engagement. Now, employees and customers can log in with SSO and collaborate in the same workspace. There’s less friction on both sides and employees are better positioned to provide value on an ongoing basis.

SSO even supports companies running their business on a hybrid infrastructure with some apps in the cloud, while others are hosted on-prem – this is a huge deal for companies that need to go remote ASAP.

Lumen adopted Azure AD to ensure employees could easily access all of their apps and accounts when COVID shut everything down in 2020. Multi-factor authentication eliminated the need to log into a VPN to access on-prem apps, while Azure AD was used to manage cloud-based tools. SSO works with both – making things easy on users, while also keeping things secure.

What’s more, the Azure AD app gallery includes thousands of apps – including Salesforce, Zoom, Workday, Google Cloud – pre-integrated for easy SSO configuration, deployment, and automated provisioning.

Automated provisioning eliminates the need to manually generate new user accounts and remove old ones when users leave the company. Instead, the platform automatically provides users with new resources as they become available – while also ensuring that all provisioning activities follow one set of policies.

HR teams can also set up inbound provisioning via Azure AD – which automatically gives new hires access to everything they need the moment onboarding begins.

For example, fashion retailer, ASOS adopted Azure AD to automate account provisioning across its expansive digital ecosystem to protect internal systems against security threats. While the company is one of the largest retailers in the world, they were still manually opening and closing accounts as people came and went – and naturally, some old accounts stayed open – a major security risk that only gets worse over time.

Finally, SSO’s time-saving abilities help orgs reduce overhead costs and reallocate those resources to areas that create value for the business.

Final thoughts

Yes, SSO eliminates the everyday pain caused by passwords. But – it also saves time, protects your business from the security risks caused by rookie password mistakes, and automatically gives users access to relevant resources. 

Bottom line: SSO is a small upgrade with the potential high-impact improvements.

To learn more about Microsoft apps and their features, head over to YouTube and check out the rest of the playlist. We break down a range of topics including Azure Synapse, Teams integrations, and extending the value of D365 BC — all in just 15 minutes or less and if you’re interested in looking for someone to help your organization implement these changes, head to our Partner ISV page to learn why Velosio might just be the right fit to help you achieve your organizations goals.