5 Reasons Why Shibboleth is the Best Single Sign-On Solution

If you’ve been considering a move to the world of cloud solutions for your enterprise, there’s a thing you should be considering – a single sign-on solution. It’s going to make a lot of things easier, safer, and more convenient, and it’s got a few other benefits that your enterprise will get to enjoy.

But if you’re considering it already, the question remains – which SSO solution should you go for? There are a few fairly strong arguments to be made for a solution called Shibboleth SSO, which is a strong contender for the best SSO solution.

What is Shibboleth SSO?

Ask enterprises who have been in the cloud storage game for a while, and they’ll be quick to tell you that Shibboleth is one of the world’s most widely used ID management systems. It grew out of the Internet2 initiative, which is led by high-ranking names in the research, academic, and industrial worlds, and is an excellent solution for a single sign-on system. Why do we say it’s the best? Let’s find out.

It’s Open-Source

With security being a big point of SSO systems in general, one of the best things that you can do is go for open-source software. You can see exactly what’s going on and how it works, and it’s rather easy to implement in various systems and platforms. Shibboleth is open-source, and it’ compliant with CAS, OIDC, SAML, and ADFS standards, making it rather versatile.

It is Very Secure

Another “point” in the security basket, Shibboleth is based on PKI or public key infrastructure. PKI incorporates technologies, processes, and policies to encrypt data, significantly boosting the level of security. Certificates for authentication are created, which authenticate users’ data and keep the data secure, away from prying eyes.

As a platform, PKI has been continuously tested and reviewed for over 15 years, and all by both organizations and independent experts, which is a testament to the levels of security you’re looking at.

It’s Easy to Implement

This is arguably one of the most difficult things to consider as an enterprise – how difficult is it to implement a new solution? This is also why many enterprises are slow to adopt certain technologies because the time and difficulty it takes to do so far outweighs the benefits they stand to gain.

However, with Shibboleth, that’s not the case. It’s designed to plug into existing infrastructure, and it’s made to work with things like CAS, LDAP, SQL, Kerberos, SPNEGO and other similar solutions. This makes it very simple to implement because in most cases, you don’t need to rework your entire infrastructure to work around it, and instead, you can make it work with what you’re using. And while we’re talking simplicity …

There’s no User Training Required

Another pain point for many enterprises is training their users and employees to work on a new system. There’s no going around it, it’s a difficult process to go through, especially for the IT support teams that need to work with everyone who can’t quite get the hang of it. And to make matters worse, it’s a process that can stretch through a couple of months.

With Shibboleth, there is zero user training required. When the SSO is deployed on the enterprise’s server, things will work just as they did before, with one key difference – users won’t need to input their login credentials multiple times for different applications. This streamlines the process quite a bit and deals with a major potential problem.

App Compatibility is Excellent

You can’t implement an SSO without being sure it’s compatible with the apps you’re using, and Shibboleth boasts compatibility with over 5,500 enterprise cloud apps. This is nothing short of phenomenal because regardless of the apps you’re using, you’ll be able to integrate them with the SSO.

To make things even better, the attribute mapping system that Shibboleth supports will also make compatibility with future apps much easier, reducing the chances of an app not working with it to an absolute minimum.

By All Means, Go for It

When you factor in all the benefits you stand to get by opting for Shibboleth, it only makes sense that you make the jump if you haven’t done that already. It’s open-source, it works with almost any enterprise cloud app under the sun, it’s secure, and you won’t spend months training your employees and users to use it. It’s becoming a must-have solution, same as having more than one internet provider to avoid internet outages and loss of data. 

It’s a great idea for anyone who wants to boost their security and streamline the process of logging in to multiple apps and switching between them. And when you factor in that it’s made to work around the most popular IAM (identity and authentication) systems that are already in use, implementing it is actually quite simple – all you have to do is go for it.  

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