Concept: SAML Single Sign-On

Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is an XML-based framework for transferring identity data between 2 entities: a service provider (SP) and an identity provider (IdP). VNDLY is considered an SP. With SAML, the SP (VNDLY) agrees to trust the IdP to authenticate users. In return, the IdP performs the authentication and generates an authentication assertion, which indicates that a user has been authenticated. This is also known as Federated Identity. Authentication information is exchanged through digitally signed XML documents.

SAML is mostly used as a web-based authentication mechanism as it relies on using the browser agent to manage the authentication flow.

SAML is flexible enough to support the authorization workflow being initiated by either the SP or the IdP. When setting up SAML single sign-on (SSO), customers determine where users will initiate the SSO.

There are many benefits of implementing SAML SSO:

Ease of access for users
Increased security with a single point of authentication
Reduced costs for user maintenance in VNDLY
Increased compliance

This is an example SAML flow when a user tries to sign into VNDLY using SSO.

A user signs into VNDLY from a browser with their username, which is configured to use SSO.
The browser redirects the request to the IdP.
The IdP authenticates the user (through username and password or two-factor authentication) and generates a SAML response.
The IdP returns the encoded SAML response to the browser.
The browser sends the SAML response to the SP for verification.
If the verification is successful, the SP grants the user access to VNDLY.