SSO (single sign-on)
Logging in once with a company account (Microsoft, Google, Okta) to use many apps, managed centrally by IT.
The app trusts an identity provider instead of keeping its own passwords, usually over OpenID Connect or SAML. For the company it means one place to enforce multi-factor login and to cut access when someone leaves. For B2B SaaS, SSO is often a condition of buying, and the reason many products put it in the top plan.
Related terms
- OAuth: A standard that lets an app act on a user’s account elsewhere (mail, calendar, files) without ever seeing the password.
- Multi-tenancy (multi-tenant SaaS): One application and one deploy serving many client companies, with each client’s data kept apart.
- WAF (web application firewall): A filter in front of a web app that blocks malicious HTTP requests before they reach your code.
- MFA (2FA, multi-factor authentication): Logging in with two or more kinds of proof, such as a password plus a code from an app or a security key.
- Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD): Microsoft’s cloud identity service behind Microsoft 365 logins, renamed from Azure Active Directory in 2023.
- SCIM (user provisioning): A standard API that lets a company’s identity system create, update and remove user accounts in your SaaS automatically.
