Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) Is The Name Of the Security Assertion Markup Language, An Authentication Protocol In Websites And Web-Based Software Users Use When Entering These Systems.

In addition, the employees of the organizations use the above technology indirectly to enter the systems. This language simplifies user authentication and allows network and security administrators to authenticate people with less hassle.

More precisely, SAML establishes a secure communication channel between systems and allows users to gain access to different techniques with a single username and password.

What is SAML?

SAML is a standard based on XML Extensible Markup Language, establishing a standard and secure communication channel between identity providers and service providers. It is a simple and fast authentication process used by large enterprise web-based applications such as Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Gmail, and similar examples. This protocol performs various integration, identity management, and unified identification tasks. Identity integration allows us to store the identity information of users associated with different applications and services in a single place. So that the user only authenticates once and enters the username and password that he has to have the ability to access other systems based on the above standard. With SAML, security experts can more accurately confirm the identity of users. Before we get into the technical discussion of SAML, let’s give an example to show what SAML is and why it is functional.

Let’s say you’ve just joined a company, and they provide you with a work email address and access to a web-based dashboard. When you enter this dashboard, you will see icons for all the external services that the company uses, such as Salesforce, Expensify, Jira, AWS, and more.

You click on the Salesforce icon, and it does something in the background. Next, you log in to the Salesforce service that the company subscribes to without entering any specific work or identity information. What happened that you can use the third-party services that the company operates by entering your identity information only once? The answer lies in SAML technology. This technology, relying on the XML standard, enables the transfer of identity data between two identity provider services (IdP) named identity provider and service provider (SP) named service provider.

• Identity Provider: Performs the authentication process and sends information about the user’s identity and authorization to the service provider. 

• Service Provider: The service provider receives identity information from the identity provider and allows the user to access the requested resource.

In the above scenario, the identity provider is your company, and the service provider is Salesforce. You log into the company dashboard with your credentials, click on the Salesforce icon, and Salesforce recognizes that you’re trying to access resources via SAML. Salesforce sends a SAML request to the company’s security services for your authentication information in this case. Since your data is already registered in the company’s system, the security mechanisms send the authentication information to Salesforce as a SAML response through a secure and encrypted session. Salesforce will review this response and allow you to access the resource if the data-matching process is correct. Please note that in all these steps, you enter the authentication information once, and with a simple click, you are connected to the third-party services that the company received from the service providers.

What problems can SAML solve?

Typically, systems use a database or Lightweight Access Protocol (LDAP) to maintain user account credentials and data and to store data needed to authenticate users.

This repository’s information is used for validation whenever a user intends to enter the system. When a person is going to log into several methods, each requiring different identity information, users must maintain the login information for all their user accounts. Administrators are also responsible for registering or deleting this information. As you might have guessed, the above process creates various problems.

Aiming to overcome these problems, SAML technology has provided a unified authentication mechanism for logging in to websites and applications that support the said technology. SAMLIt is the most widely used web-based suitable authentication protocol that small and large organizations can use. Typically, enterprise users, when they turn on their system, are faced with a login page that allows the SAML protocol to be added to this page. In this case, users only need one-time Authentication to log in to all web applications.

Benefits of SAML authentication

Among the benefits of SAML -the based authentication index, the following should be mentioned:

• Improved User Experience: Users log in to the organization’s web-based dashboard only once to access the services of different providers. The above mechanism allows the authentication process to be done faster, and the user can access the required resources quickly. Users don’t have to remember different login credentials for each app.
• Increased Security: SAML defines a centralized and unified mechanism for Authentication in the form of a secure identity provider service. This form of Authentication ensures that credentials are shipped directly by the IdP. Then, it sends the identity information to the service providers. SAML does not need to maintain and synchronize user information between directories.
• Reduced Costs for Service Providers: By using SAML, you don’t need to maintain account information for different services. The identity provider performs all these processes.

How does SAML work?

SAML allows service providers or applications to delegate Authentication to a dedicated service provider (IdP). In this case, the mechanisms used by service providers must be configured to access and trust identity provider information through coordinated and integrated processes. For a service provider, it does not matter how the identity provider evaluates and verifies the user’s identity and credentials; only the user’s verified authentication information matters. The vital principle is that the user can access the required resources through a username and password managed by the identity service provider.

• John Maguire, the senior software engineer, points to an exciting example of entering a conference call to explain the above mechanism. He says: “Suppose an employee clicks a link to enter a virtual meeting based on Webex technology and participate in a video conference, and after entering the Webex page, it is determined from which IdP to authenticate. He is used. Next, Webex redirects the user to its IdP and sends a message containing an authentication request. IdP uses different methods for this purpose. So, it checks the status of the user’s account and credentials; the device used to access the application, and the network the user is on.

• Additionally, Webex can use a multi-factor authentication mechanism. In this case, security experts configure the technical infrastructure necessary for user authentication. All these steps determine what level of Authentication should be used, such as one-factor, two-factor, or three-factor Authentication.

The IdP checks the above data and generates a message called a SAML Assertion in which the user’s identity and attributes are confirmed. It uses cryptographic algorithms to prove authenticity, then sends this data through a browser redirection process to Webex, which validates the signature, verifies the user’s data, and grants the user access to the application if approved. For example, if the IdP detects that it is impossible to identify the user’s geographic location, it stops Authentication.

• Jamie Pringle, the senior software engineer, says: “All these processes and communications are done using the user’s browser, while everything happens behind the scenes. That’s why multiple service providers are set up for an IDP.” 

Some service providers do not support the SP-Initiated Process mechanism. Commonly, SAML -a based authentication mechanism is implemented in two ways. In a process initiated by the service provider, the user attempts to log into the service provider’s web portal. In this case, instead of asking for credentials, the user’s browser is directed to the identity provider through a SAML request for Authentication. In an IdP-initiated process, a user logs in to the IdP and authenticates, then is directed to the service provider with a SAML assertion. In this case, only the second method can be used.

How can companies and organizations use SAML?

Since SAML was first designed and developed, it has become the standard for unified web-based Authentication. In a short period, it has won the favor of businesses to use this mechanism to authenticate their employees.

Michael Kelly, senior research director in Gartner’s closed business enablement group, said: “As companies are forced to use applications outside the enterprise network environment to perform their daily tasks, access management has become critical. For this reason, the importance of SAML has increased for organizations and users who need unified Authentication.

The achievements of this architecture are straightforward for users and network administrators. Users no longer need to enter digital credentials in different applications. After Authentication, users can connect to other systems without having to authenticate multiple times. In general, as Aaron Parecki, Okta’s chief security strategy director, says: “Authentication is done more securely.,

This method has exemplary achievements for users in terms of security because the user enters his digital credential information only on the server that has this information and is local. If you’re going to log into an app, you don’t need to trust that app to manage your credentials. Everything is done through a centralized and secure identity-based system.

Maguire believes that SAML allows administrators to use a single access point to implement security controls across multiple applications. 

Hence, instead of worrying about 20 different applications and their authentication methods, they can set up an IdP to verify the identity of all their users.

This way, administrators can add policies such as multi-factor Authentication to the services they support. In addition, they will have a single point to investigate security incidents. Despite the ease of use and simple implementation of SAML, the above method has disadvantages that should not be ignored.

“This protocol has its drawbacks,” Kelly says. For example, it lacks features and capabilities found in newer protocols. However, this protocol is easy to work with if you have a web-based application that natively supports it.”

New technology, new standards

SAML was one of the first standards designed to solve the problem of web-based auAuthenticationnd is widely used compared to other protocols. Most cloud services that businesses use can integrate with SAML. Typically, authentication service providers provide consumers with documentation about the applications with which the integration process has taken place, which is helpful in this regard.

SAML is a member of a large family of modern authentication protocols that includes standards such as OAuth and OIDC, known as Open ID Connect. Security administrators can use the OAuth protocol to authenticate users and allow applications to perform specific actions on the user’s behalf so that the user can access particular resources without requiring credentials. The OIDC protocol also builds on OAuth and is an open standard business can use to validate user identities.

Parkey describes this standard as the modern version of SAML.

“I think when you’re going to use SAML for modern technologies, you quickly run into limitations.” he says: “There have been many changes in the technology world that SAML has not been developed according to them. For example, consider OpenID Connect, which is built to work with smartphones and uses JSON instead of XML.

According to Parkey, SAML may have addressed the issue of unifying authenAuthenticationit was not designed for the API-based world that forms one of the essential pillars of the web and information technology today. In addition to knowing about the user’s identity, today’s applications require access to APIs, which OIDC and OAuth do better.

Authentication integration

“Today, a wide variety of tasks are performed by APIs,” Kelly says. Developers also do the process of developing application software in the same way. They tend to use APIs for authenAuthenticatione development of applications.

This way, the features and functionality of OAuth and OIDC are increasingly complex. At the same time, SAML has a simple model and lacks the peripheral capabilities of processes based on application programming interfaces. While the adoption and use of OAuth and ODIC are increasing daily, Kelly predicts that these technologies will take at least 8 to 10 years to displace SAML.