Implementing Single Sign-On: Some Challenges

 SSO software can be applied to both the organization’s internal processes, giving employees better access to corporate services and customer-facing platforms, i.e., various applications, portals, or websites provided to customers by the company and requiring registration and login.

SSO systems streamline the customer journey, synchronize customer credentials between various systems, ensure a seamless customer experience, unify customer management between e-commerce, CRM, ERP, etc.

Challenges with Integration

The key technological challenges when a company decides to opt for Single Sign-On are related to the integration of various systems during implementation. This refers both to the design and security of these systems. To facilitate communication between these disparate technologies, any middleware, i.e., a solution that will sit between all these systems and provide them with the Single Sign-On functionality is needed.

Unique integrations must be produced for each of the appropriate applications, e.g., blog, online shop, website, loyalty program, etc. The number of points of integration is enormous. It is also a major challenge to ensure that all these systems work together properly to provide the customer with a smooth SSO experience.

Consistency Issues

There are many different systems used by most organizations today, including websites, mobile applications, etc. It is important to ensure that, at least as far as the authorization processes are concerned, all these systems have a similar appearance. This can obviously be done by unifying the user interface architecture and design by constantly implementing the same policies and templates on all login screens in different applications. This can be achieved to some extent. But since these are independent projects with different teams, including their own dedicated product owners and front-end developers, it is very possible that, despite using the same requirements and guidelines, login pages would look a little different on other websites.

The scenario may be completely different if a company decides to opt for an SSO. From the moment the solution is introduced, various systems use only a single login page, a centrally hosted login screen, shared by all applications. As a result, the login screen is identical on all customer-facing sites since, in fact, it is exactly the same page, a common standard for all of these systems.

Coordinating Timelines

A Single Sign-On project also requires many systems. Obviously, the job can be split into several sequential stages, i.e., we first introduce SSO for just one selected area, e.g., an online product catalogue, then for another, e.g., an e-commerce site, and so on, until the solution is fully operational for all customer-facing systems. However, this technique has substantial drawbacks because before SSO is applied in at least two separate systems, the consumer gets no benefits from it.

In reality, different systems for Single Sign On may have various requirements. For this reason, it is recommended that SSOs should be designed, installed, and implemented simultaneously in all the related systems. If we do so, for both the business and the customer, the advantages will be immediate. Users can log in once and will be permitted on the website or app of every other company.

This is a significant benefit for the customer but a major challenge for the company, which must face the coordination of the implementation process of SSO in different systems. Not every team has to start the implementation at the same time, but they all have to finish it simultaneously to allow the customer to quickly benefit from the solution.

Conclusion

SSO provides many distinctive benefits, considering these limitations. In addition to many other features, the new data protection solutions also include streamlined SSO facilities that help companies protect their data and comply with data privacy guidelines. These solutions are, therefore, worth the investment.