What Is SSO and How Can It Benefit Your Company?

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7 min. read
Matthew Gibbons
Matthew Gibbons
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Senior Data & Tech Writer
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What is SSO
SSO, or Single Sign-On, is a convenient and secure way for users to access multiple websites and applications with just one set of login credentials.

Andy is losing his mind. He’s set up so many accounts for his overseas chinese in canada data at this point that he’s having to keep up with 78 different passwords at once, and with so many different logins, he’s started just using the same passwords over and over.

Not only is Andy struggling to remember all his passwords, but the fact that he keeps reusing them is causing a threat to his account security. If you relate to Andy’s situation, you might be wondering if there’s a solution — and luckily for you, there is.

With a single sign-on (SSO) program, you can make it much easier to access all your accounts without needing to track countless passwords. But what is SSO, exactly, and how does it work? Keep reading to find out.

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What is SSO?
SSO stands for single sign-on. An SSO program is software that enables you to sign in to all your accounts via a single service. Rather than signing in individually to each of your accounts, you can simply sign in to the SSO to gain access to all those accounts.

How does SSO software work?
It can be easy to assume that single sign-on software is simply a password manager, but that’s not the case. With a password manager, you’re still using a different password for each account, and you still have to log in to each account individually — the password manager simply auto-fills those passwords.

But with SSO, you’re not managing different passwords, and you don’t have to log in each time. Instead, you’re bypassing the use of passwords altogether for your accounts, and you only have to log in a single time to access all of them.

Basically, you start by logging in to your SSO. As soon as you’ve done that, you can visit any of the accounts you’ve connected to that SSO and already be logged in to them.

When you visit a site or open a program that normally requires a login, the SSO will tell that site or program that you’re already authenticated, so you’ll be able to bypass the login and go straight to the content.