With so many business applications it is not unusual for people to need to log in to five, ten, even twenty websites every day! Remembering that many passwords can get tricky. A single sign-on system is a secure and efficient solution to the “too many passwords to remember!” problem. Here are 4 benefits for businesses that implement a Single Sign-On (SSO) solution:
Single Sign-On Saves Money on Help Desk Expenses
An estimated 50% of all help desk inquiries are for password reset requests! As websites and applications require increasingly stronger passwords which include a combination of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols, users are finding it increasingly difficult to remember their passwords. If people only need to remember a single password, the number of help desk inquiries for password reset requests will decrease, saving you money on your help desk expenses. Managing passwords for a large organization with multiple applications is time consuming – and a headache for your IT guys. If your IT department is spending too much time resetting passwords and other security credential tasks, they’re not spending enough time on more productive activities.
Single Sign-On Increases Security
At first, it may seem having a single password per user is less secure, since if the password is stolen, all of the connected applications are then at risk. When an organization uses a single sign-on solution, and users are only required to remember one password, they can make that password very strong (and therefore, unlikely that anyone could guess it), and instead of having a notebook full of passwords that could get into the wrong hands – they just have a single password to keep confidential. Additionally, SSO makes it more likely employees will use a secure file transfer system, which is especially important for industries dealing with HIPAA or PCI-DSS regulations. Employees often look for workaround methods for these applications as they can be difficult to login. With a single-sign on, you at least remove the barriers of entry for your team and help improve security and compliance requirements.
SSO Makes Customers Happy
When you create a user-friendly login process to your website or software application, you improve customer satisfaction right from the start. Many websites currently offering SSO are social networking sites or Web 2.0 sites which put a lot of value on the experience of their end users. The easier it is for your customers or prospects to log into your site, the happier they are and more likely they are to refer you to others.
Single Sign-On Increases Efficiency and Productivity The number one benefit of an SSO solution is that it increases the efficiency and productivity of your team. When people don’t have to flip through pages of usernames and passwords to try and find the right combination for the application they need to use, the time savings will add up. Not to mention, if the passwords are typed incorrectly more than three times, most websites will lock the user out which requires a call to the help desk to reset the password and start all over. All of this time is causing a loss of productivity when a single sign-on solution would have allowed instant access to the application the employee needed so he or she could get right to work.
