Replacing mainframes with 21st century identity

By Paul Madsen, senior technical architect

The concept of single sign-on (SSO) is not a new one, and over the years it has successfully bridged the gap between security and productivity for organizations all over the globe.

Allowing users to authenticate once to gain access to enterprise applications improves access security and user productivity by reducing the need for passwords.

In the days of mainframes, SSO was used to help maintain productivity and security from inside the protection of firewalls. As organizations moved to custom-built authentication systems in the 1990’s, it became recognized as enterprise SSO (ESSO) and later evolved into browser-based plugin or web-proxy methods known as web access management (WAM). IT’s focus was on integrating applications exclusively within the network perimeter.

However, as enterprises shifted toward cloud-based services at the turn of the century and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications became more …