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Single Sign On Software

There is a wide variety of single sign on software to choose from.

Open Source

In the open source environment, the leading single sign on software is CAS (Central Authentication Service) developed out of Yale university. However, be warned that this software lacks the flexibility to deal with a wide variety of authentication devices, which has been common in commercial software vendors for the past three to four years. It only accepts id and password and digital certificates.

Further, this software has no built in user provisioning or federated authentication. The ability to do this requires interfaces with other open source software. This is again a divergent point from commercial identity management software where identity management, provisioning, single sign on, federation and regulatory audit reporting are now integrated packages.

Therefore, if you're on a very limited budget, with lots of development resources available and, the limitations as expressed above are not a problem, then use CAS.

Hardware/Software Plug and Play SSO

The next step up the ladder are hardware/softare servers which can be rapidly deployed "plug and play" to provide single sign on. the best example of this is Imprivata. Their devices can work with legacy systems, be rapidly installed and provide single sign on. Their product also works with mutliple authentication devices to enable stronger authentication. Theire product does not however provide provisioning and federated identiifcation services. As a quick fix to existing single sign on issues it is very good but limited in providing an integrated suite required to address the enterprise identity management problems.

SSO Identity Management Suite Vendors

Then there are the top tier identity management vendors, all of which have single sign on included in their product suite. These include Oracle, Sun, Computer Associates, HP, IBM, Novell, Entrust and RSA amongst others. 

The product suites usually incude the ability ot do delgated identity administration, identity provisioning and deprovisioning, single sign on, federated identities, regulatory compliance reporting and various role based access control. Not all packages are equal. Caveat emptor. Hiring a knowledgable identity management and single sign on consultant can avoid unnecessary expense, years of frustration and the creaiton of security holes through poor deployment of the product.

Finally, there is one company that focusses on federated identities and authentication, Ping Identity. Ping focuses on creating an external identity bridge between disparate identity management systems. It is an excellent choice for doing identity federation either internally between different business units or between your enterprise and others.

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