In today’s modern networking environment, administrators in many organizations face the challenge of managing authentication for employees, especially when dealing with large staff numbers. Granting access to individual tools can be tedious for both administrators and users, as employees must log in multiple times when switching between tools and remember separate credentials for each.
DDI Central—a centralized platform for managing DNS, DHCP, and IPAM—streamlines authentication administration and protects users from credential theft. By implementing SAML and offering sSingle sign-on (SSO), it enhances security while improving the user experience, allowing employees to access multiple tools with a single login.
What is SAML?
Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is a security standard used to authenticate users across various software applications. SAML enables SSO, allowing users to create one set of credentials that can be used to access multiple tools within an organization. This standard benefits organizations by enhancing interoperability, enabling access to different vendors’ tools simultaneously through SSO.
SAML is primarily used for identity federation, where a user’s credentials are securely linked across multiple software platforms, facilitating seamless authentication between the service provider and the identity provider.
How does SAML works?
There are three main components in SSO authentication process:
1. Principal (user)
2. Service provider (SP)
3. Identity provider (IdP)
Principal refers to the user who is attempting to log in through SSO to access tools provided by various vendors. The user initiates a request to the service provider (SP), which is typically a cloud-hosted application or service. The service provider serves as an intermediary between the user and the identity provider (IdP). The IdP is a system or cloud service that manages user identities and handles the authentication process.
When the SP receives the request from the principal, it redirects the authentication request to the IdP. The IdP authenticates the user by verifying their credentials (typically via a username and password, and an additional authentication factor). If the authentication is successful, the IdP generates a SAML assertion.
A SAML assertion is an XML-formatted message sent by the IdP to the SP. It contains information about the authenticated user (such as their identity and attributes). This assertion is signed with an XML digital signature for integrity and authenticity, and it may also be encrypted for confidentiality, depending on security requirements.
The SP receives the SAML assertion and verifies its authenticity and integrity by validating the signature. If the user’s identity in the SAML assertion matches the expected user identity (as known by the SP), the SP grants the user access to the requested resources.
How does SAML benefit your organization?
Single credential authentication
SAML’s biggest benefit is to organizations that have users who want to sign into multiple tools from different vendors with a single set of credentials. SSO facilitates users to only use a single set of credentials, which reduces the burden of remembering multiple credentials for each tool, thus minimizing manual login errors.
Better user experience
SAML also enables a faster login process for users to quickly access tools during emergency cases. The one-time login makes switching between software easy—without needing to log in for individual tools—increasing optimization and utilization of different tools in the organization.
Access to multiple software
SAML makes it easier to gain access across different systems with SSO for users to switch and use. Organizations can integrate various cloud-hosted and on-premises applications, providing a seamless user experience across a wide range of software tools.
Increased security
SAML centralizes the authentication at the IdP, which allows for multi-factor authentication (MFA) and other security policies. The encrypted assertion messages of user identity from SAML reduces the credential exposure to the SP, ensuring privacy and confidentiality for both users and organizations. SAML also supports single logout (SL) for logging out of all the authorized tools at once.
Improve your organization’s tool utilization by enabling SAML
ManageEngine DDI Central’s SAML implementation benefits organizations by enhancing integrity, security, and accessibility. It unifies the login process for various tools from different vendors through SSO. SAML assertions protect user identities from being exposed to service providers, preventing malicious intrusions. SSO improves the user experience by enabling one-time login access to multiple tools, allowing for seamless switching between each of them.
With DDI Central, users no longer need to remember separate credentials for each tool, increasing both efficiency and security while reducing the risk of manual errors.
