Cloud-based single sign-on means access and security everywhere

The cloud is now the standard of corporate organizational life. It is a standard practice for nearly every sector of every industry. So, there must be solutions available to help manage these cloud applications.

To effectively manage your cloud applications – access security and permissions – is to employ automated account management technology for both in-house and cloud applications. Doing so means you’ll create easier provisioning, making changes and eliminating user accounts (when required), while also helping you provide correct access rights to protect who has access to your information.

This is creates ease of use for your account admins. How about for your end users? Your employees need a way to easily manage, and access, their cloud applications. Think about a user who has numerous applications they use on a daily basis. Let’s play this out: Your employees must open a new browser tab for each application they need to access within your organization’s corporate structure then sign in – every time.

In nearly every industry sector, employees also must access work applications outside the company network, and while this might not be inconvenient for those in the office, for those on the road, that’s an entirely different story.

Technology is available to easily manage these applications from any location. So, how does it work?

Web-based single sign-on (SSO) can easily handle cloud applications. Users simply access a portal where all applications they are authorized to user are available. With one set of credentials, they can access any of these applications by clicking on the icon from anywhere that they are working, inside or outside of the company’s network from virtually any device.

For mobile device use, this is the way to go. Opening each application in a new tab and entering credentials is a time-consuming process, and a major problem for those who use tablets or smartphones. With the web-based single sign-on, they can access what they need, from anywhere, at any time, without having to be inconvenienced.

So when dealing with the cloud, the cloud SSO solution is a likely means to the end. For example, in education, students complete a large majority of their work outside of the school’s network, many while using mobile devices in the process.

In healthcare, clinicians move about from room to room and floor to floor, visiting patients, entering patient information into a terminal or possibly using a tablet and need to quickly access the applications and systems they need.

For a sales associate within a large organization, they’re likely always on the go, or they better be, for the success of your organization. When meeting customers at their location wherever that may be, they need to access customer information. However, one primary concern for organizational leaders when trying to bring this type of solution into the organization is security. Security, it is an understatement to say it is an overwhelming task. While yes, IT and security leaders need their employees to remain productive, perform tasks and access resources they must have; securing access from unauthorized users is an absolute necessity.

SSO unsecure?

The greatest concern organizational leaders have, despite overwhelming news in the trade publications proving that SSO is quite secure, is exactly that – that the solutions create opportunities for leaving the network unsecure. But that argument is easily contradicted.

Let’s do so: Think through the fact that your users, who currently have several sets of complex credentials for the multitude of applications that they utilize, there’s a very good chance that as the employees need these credentials they do nothing more than turn to their Post-It notes that are stuck to their computers or taped to their monitors or tucked into their wallets or purses. They write these credentials down for future use or even save them in their phones for easy access to these passwords. Is this practice safer than the use of a secure system designed to protect the one-mandated password through the use of single sign-on technology? Not likely.

On the contrary. Your system is actually more secure having a single set of credentials that the users do not need to remember or write down.

Customization

Security is clearly one of the greatest priorities of any organization. With this in mind, you can easily customize your cloud-based single sign-on solution to ensure additional levels of security measures, if you feel that they are necessary. This may be the case especially in sectors where information is highly sensitive. For example, for those working in the financial sector or those in healthcare.

Depending on the level of security needed there can be different methods of authentication required through the cloud solution. For the user working in finance, the solution can implemented to require that the employee enters his or her credentials as well as providing a second form of identification, be it a one-time use PIN, an access card or even a biometric imprint like a fingerprint or facial recognition.

Cloud SSO solutions can also be customized to meet the needs of most organizations across the globe for any number of positions or employees within your group. Additionally, you can easily add to or delete applications for each group. With the SSO, you can break down groups in varying ways depending on your organizational needs. You also can easily develop groups within your organization so that each employee only has the applications they need in their work portal at a time in which they need it.

So, while the cloud is now the standard of corporate organizational life, and its practice widely spread, this means more opportunity for loss of data and potential hack. Cloud single sign-on solutions effortlessly allow employees to easily access the systems they need wherever they are with a single click and one set of sign-in credentials. This, of course, improves efficiency and productivity while also keeping the organization happy by ensuring security.