Helping Teams Work More Efficiently with Launch of SSO

For employers, managing and securing their employees’ work activities is becoming increasingly complicated, with the latest studies indicating that the average employee now switches between 35 job-critical applications more than 1,100 times every day. And when you consider the added strain that more of us are now working remotely, this challenge has become even harder.

With more apps and consequently more usernames and passwords in circulation, there’s an increased number of opportunities for cyber criminals to attack your systems and steal your data. Yet, with Single Sign On (SSO) in place, the number of surfaces potentially vulnerable to attack is hugely reduced, as you’re only required to have one set of credentials and can access everything you need with a single log in. With everything managed centrally, SSO is also a far simpler and more efficient way of working.

Subsequently, we are delighted to announce that with the launch of our Single Sign On (SSO) feature, it will be even easier for our customers to manage and secure their survey activities and teams.

What is Single Sign On?

SSO enables people to sign into multiple products and services with just one set of user credentials, commonly assigned by their organisation.

SSO is made up of 3 parts:

• Identity Provider (IdP) – This tool provides validation of the user’s identity. The IdP is something the user’s organisation will control, commonly the IT department, where their internal user credentials are managed for applications like Office 365 and others. Common examples of Identity Providers are Microsoft Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Active Directory Federated Services and Okta.
• Service Provider (SP) – This refers to the product that the user would like to use, for   example SmartSurvey.
• The User – The user is part of a user directory within the Identity Provider. The IdP checks that the user is entitled to access the various products and services allocated to them and provides access based on their user credentials being authenticated successfully.

Wide ranging benefits of SSO

There are a wide range of benefits to be gained from signing up to and using SSO access:

Increased security

• Control user access – with SSO you have much greater visibility over who is accessing certain products and services within your organisation and whether they have the right level of user credentials to do so. It’s also easier to set up and manage different user access and immediately disable access to applications when employees leave the company.
• Drastically reduce the risk of data breach – by reducing the ability for employees to share accounts the potential risk of a data breach is significantly reduced. In the unlikely event that an incident should occur, it’s quick and simple to conduct a detailed and accurate audit trail.

Ease of management

• It’s easier to manage your staff – from onboardingto offboarding and everything in-between. With SSO, it’s much easier to set up user access and adjust these as employees move through their employment journey with you from arrival to departure.
• It’s much simpler to see what your staff are using and working on – with everything now managed centrallyit’s a lot simpler to oversee everything to do with your employees’ work activities and security. And you’re no longer wasting time trying to sort out challenges with unknown applications and user passwords that your staff may previously have been using.

Increased efficiencies

• Save employees time – with users no longer having to manage multiple usernames and passwords it saves everyone time. With only a single set of credentials required to access everything, users can swap and work seamlessly between applications for a smoother, more efficient day. Your IT department gain more time to focus on higher level priorities too, as they are no longer constrained by having to replace and reset staff passwords.
• Improve the productivity of new staff – as long you have provided access though your identity provider, anyone joining your organisation for the first time can gain immediate access to everything they need to perform their jobs – making them more productive from their very first day.

Get started with Single Sign On

Make your survey process even simpler and more seamless with SSO. Find out more by talking to your account manager today.

Alternatively, if you are looking for a new online survey provider and want to experience the benefits of this feature, why not contact us about how we might be able to assist you.