97% of SaaS vendors use SAML-based single sign-on

OneLogin and the Cloud Security Alliance today announced findings from their OneLogin 2014 State of SaaS Identity Management survey, which was conducted to better understand the maturity of SaaS vendors in their implementation of identity management solutions, security standards and assurance certifications.

Most notably, the survey results point to the widespread adoption of SAML standards by SaaS vendors for single sign-on identity management, in response to customer demands for fast, simple and secure employee, customer and partner access to applications in their environments.

By eliminating all passwords and instead using digital signatures for authentication and authorization of data access, SAML has become the Gold Standard for single sign-on into cloud applications. SAML-enabled SaaS applications are easier and quicker to user provision in complex enterprise environments, are more secure and help simplify identity management across large and diverse user communities.

100 participants completed the OneLogin 2014 State of SaaS Identity Management survey. Key findings include:

• SAML is identity management standard of choice – 67 percent of the SaaS vendors surveyed use SAML today for single sign-on identity management, while 19 percent said they planned to implement SAML within the next 12 months. Only 3 percent had no plans to implement the standard.
• Customer demand, security and speed drive SAML adoption – 26 percent of survey respondents cited demand from existing customers as the primary driver behind their SAML adoption, 21 percent cited improved security and compliance, and nearly 22 percent cited quick integration into cloud application ecosystems.
• SAML adoption not limited to the Web browser – 37 percent of the SaaS vendors surveyed leverage SAML on mobile versions of their apps, and 25 percent use SAML for desktop applications not including a web browser.

OneLogin is a longtime supporter of the SAML standard. Its cloud-based solution for single sign-on and enterprise identity management is pre-integrated via SAML with more than 350 enterprise applications, including Dropbox, EMC Syncplicity, Google Apps, NetSuite, Office 365, Salesforce, Workday and Zendesk. In addition, more than 150 SaaS vendors, including Dropbox, have used OneLogin’s free open source SAML Toolkits to SAML-enable their apps.

“When we open sourced our first SAML Toolkit three years ago, it was an attempt to grow the ecosystem by democratizing single sign-on and making it available to companies of any size,” said Thomas Pedersen, co-founder and CEO for OneLogin. “This survey shows that SAML is stronger than ever and the momentum is fueled by the realization that SAML provides a massive security boost by enabling enterprises to control access to their sensitive data.”