Single sign-on

Single sign-on (SSO) is a method of access control that enables a user to authenticate once and gain access to the resources of multiple software systems. Single sign-off is the reverse process whereby a single action of signing out terminates access to multiple software systems.

The term enterprise reduced sign-on is preferred by some authors because they believe single sign-on to be a misnomer: "no one can achieve it without a homogeneous IT infrastructure".[1]

In a homogeneous IT infrastructure or at least where a single user entity authentication scheme exists or where a user database is centralized, single sign-on is a visible benefit. All users in this infrastructure would have a single set of authentication credentials, e.g. in an organization which stores its user database in a LDAP database. All information processing systems can use such an LDAP database for user authentication and authorization, which in turn means single sign-on has been achieved organization-wide.

See also

• Identity management
• Password fatigue
• Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
• Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS)
• Central Authentication Service (CAS)
• OpenID
• OpenSSO
• Shibboleth
• Windows Live ID
• NTLM
• SAML
• Kerberos

External links

• Single Sign-on Resources
• Single Sign-on Intro with Diagrams