SSO INTEGRATION FOR ENHANCED USER AUTHENTICATION

Empowering Secure Access: SSO Integration for Enhanced User Authentication

This client's team was established by forward-thinking industry executives, operators, and advisors with experience creating performance cultures. The team values its astute nature in operations, supply chain management, hospitality, and technology to ensure productivity and innovation for ongoing business relationships with dozens of Fortune 500 companies.

The client provides their users with a dashboard to visualize the operational parameters of the user's business. Their users wanted to restrict access to the information in the dashboard with a username and password for authorized users to log in.

In some cases, the client prefers that users use the customer's username and password to authenticate themselves. In these cases, the customer requests that the users use the client's third-party SSO vendor to authenticate.

By creating a more modern and agile workforce tracking platform, our client was able to make AI-enhanced productivity and Machine Learning available to more businesses than ever before and become the global go-to toolkit for performance improvement. Additionally, implementing a secure form of authentication ensures that information is safe from unauthorized access, theft, or manipulation.

The Objective

The user authentication via third-party SSO is to restrict dashboard access to only authenticated users with a valid username (email address) and password. Additionally, it captures a record of the authentication attempts.

We developed a middleware (Web API) to integrate SSO authentication. We decided to start with Ping Identity and implement OneLogin, Azure, Office365, and more later. Because it is middleware, any adjustments/enhancements will not impact other applications using it.

We developed the application in Node.js, a fusion of JavaScript technologies that work together to enable business agility.

Non-Functional Requirements:

The software is a standalone deployable module, useable by a node.js webpage, delivered with documentation, and deployable in the cloud. It works on Chrome and Edge browsers. The response time should be within 3 seconds of requesting information. The software is designed so that different SSO vendors can be substituted as other customers complete onboarding and have their own SSO vendor.

Functional Requirements:

The software takes a user-entered Username and Password from a node.js webpage and authenticates them with the specified SSO vendor. The software returns information about whether the user is authenticated or not. The software includes information in the return message that can be used for logging purposes, such as a unique authentication request ID, timestamp, and username.

System Performance Requirements:

All software produced adhered to the client's performance requirements. Additionally, they adhered to the database standard, Python Coding Standard, JavaScript Coding standards, and programming guidelines.

How it Works

The user enters their credentials on the SSO utility for authentication and is redirected to their company dashboard. The user can access a different dashboard per the redirect page configured. Users will launch the client's user ID/ email and password. The user will click the login link/button and be redirected to the company selection page, where they will select their company/organization. They will be redirected to the Ping identity SSO authentication page, where they will enter their user ID and password and be redirected to the company dashboard.

It is an MVP application for authenticating users on Ping identity SSO and further redirecting users to the dashboard. The client's dashboard authentication middleware provides a powerful solution for authenticating users and ensuring secure access to their dashboard. With its scalable architecture, flexible SSO integration, and adherence to industry standards, the middleware sets the foundation for future expansion and innovation in user authentication and access control.