B2B Single Sign-On (SSO)

Enabling seamless and secure user access is critical when building B2B applications. Single Sign-On (SSO) plays a pivotal role by allowing users to log in with their existing credentials from an external identity provider (IdP). SSO is especially valuable in B2B environments, where organizations often require their employees to authenticate using their company's centralized identity systems, such as SAML or OIDC-based providers.

With Descope, you can easily integrate SSO into your B2B applications, ensuring that each tenant (or customer organization) ca use their preferred IdP for authentication. This not only simplifies the login process for end users but also enhances security and compliance by adhering to the authentication policies set by each organization.

This guide is designed to help you add SSO to your Descope-powered applications. We'll cover everything from configuring SSO for your tenants to advanced features like attribute and group mapping, ensuring a smooth and secure authentication experience for your users. Whether new to SSO or looking to optimize your implementation, this guide will provide the clarity and steps you need to succeed.

Why SSO Matters in B2B Applications

In B2B environments, where organizations rely on multiple interconnected systems, Single Sign-On (SSO) is more than just a convenience; it's mandatory. SSO allows users to authenticate once with their organization's identity provider (IdP) and gain seamless access to all authorized applications. This eliminates the need for multiple logins, reduces password fatigue, and ensures a consistent, secure authentication experience across platforms.

SSO simplifies IT management for businesses by centralizing authentication policies and ensuring compliance with organizational security standards. It also enhances productivity for end users, who no longer need to juggle multiple credentials or face frequent login interruptions.

When implemented in a B2B context, SSO enables each tenant (customer organization) to use their preferred IdP, such as SAML or OIDC-based providers, while maintaining strict control over access and security. With Descope, you can easily configure SSO for your tenants, ensuring a seamless and secure experience for your customers and their users.

Security of SSO

Implementing Single Sign-On (SSO) in your B2B applications simplifies the user experience and strengthens security by centralizing authentication. By relying on an external identity provider (IdP) to manage authentication, SSO ensures that all users within a tenant adhere to consistent security policies, such as multi-factor authentication (MFA), password complexity, and session management.

Key Security Benefits of SSO

• Centralized Authentication Policies: With SSO, tenant organizations can enforce security policies through their chosen IdP. This ensures that all users within the organization follow the same authentication standards, reducing the risk of weak or inconsistent security practices.
• Reduced Password Risks: SSO eliminates the need for users to manage multiple passwords across different applications. This reduces the likelihood of password reuse, weak passwords, or users writing down credentials, which are common vulnerabilities in traditional authentication systems. 
• Improved Monitoring and Auditing: SSO provides a consolidated view of user authentication events, access attempts, and system interactions. This makes detecting suspicious behavior, monitoring compliance, and responding to potential security incidents easier. 
• Enhanced User Experience with Security: SSO reduces user friction while maintaining strong security measures by simplifying the login process. Users only need to authenticate once to access all authorized applications, which minimizes the risk of phishing attacks and credential theft. 

Additional Security Features with SSO

In addition to the general security benefits, SSO protocols like SAML and OIDC enable advanced features that further enhance security and user management in B2B environments. These include:

• SCIM for User Provisioning: With SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management), you can automate user provisioning and de-provisioning across tenant organizations. This ensures that user accounts are created, updated, or removed in real time based on changes in the IdP, reducing the risk of unauthorized access. Learn more about SCIM in our SCIM Documentation.
• Session Management: SSO allows you to control session lengths and enforce session expiration policies. This ensures that users are logged out after a specified period of inactivity, reducing the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive applications. For more details, see our guide on session management
• Single Logout (SLO): SSO supports Single Logout, which ensures that when users log out of one application, they are automatically logged out of all connected applications. This prevents lingering sessions and ensures a clean logout experience. Learn more about SLO.

If you would like to read more about SAML and how it works, you can refer to our learning center article.

Using SSO as an Authentication Method

Once you've successfully configured SSO, the final step is to utilize it in your application as an authentication method. This can be done with Descope in a multitude of ways.

With Flows

You can simply use Descope Flows with the SSO action to authenticate with your newly configured external identity provider (IdP). Read more about it here.

Using Tenant Parameter

When using Flows, you can feed a tenant parameter into your flow, to automatically tell the flow which SSO provider (associated with said tenant) should be used and redirected to with the SSO action.

With this, there are a lot of interesting use cases which you can read about in our doc on Applications.

With SDKs

You can use Descope SDKs to authenticate with your pre-configured SSO provider as well. Read more about it here.

With APIs

You can use Descope SDKs to authenticate with your pre-configured SSO provider as well. Read more about it here.