Saml sequence diagram11/10/2023 ![]() The user agent would in most cases be a web browser. ![]() A graphical illustration is provided in Figure 1. This all might seem kind of abstract, so here’s a high-level example of how a SAML authentication transaction would play out. How does SAML authentication work? A SAML flow example A SAML assertion may be encrypted for increased security.įor more on all these terms, check out the official SAML glossary from OASIS. Once an identity provider has determined that you are who you say you are and have the right to access the content or services you’re interested in, it sends a SAML assertion to the server that actually can actually provide those services to you. What is a SAML assertion?Ī SAML assertion is the XML document by which all the information we’ve been discussing is transmitted from one computer to another. Generally speaking, the actual programs you want to get access to, like SaaS applications or protected file servers, are called service providers, while identity providers make sure the user really is who they claim to be or have the right to access the systems they’re trying to access-it provides authentication or authorization, in other words.Īn important thing to keep in mind here is that the SAML standard itself does not define how these providers do their jobs instead, it establishes what information they need to communicate to one another and how that communication and its flow are structured. In SAML lingo, a provider is an entity-generally, a server or other computer-within a system that helps the user access the services he or she wants, and that produce or consume SAML services. For instance, Microsoft has an SSO implementation that uses SAML for authentication but OAuth (another open standard that we’ll discuss in more detail later in this article) for authorization. One point of interest is that SAML doesn’t actually have to be used for both. Obviously any SSO platform will have to play both of these roles in order to do its job. Authorization: Determining if users have the right to access certain systems or content.Authentication: Determining that the users are who they claim to be.In an SSO scenario, all these services outsource their authentication and authorization functionality to a single system that then sends identity information about the user to those services. ![]() SSO, as the name implies, allows a user to log in once and access multiple services-websites, cloud or SaaS apps, file shares, and so on. While SAML was designed with a wide range of use cases in mind, by far the most common one in practice is single sign on (SSO). (SAMLDiffs has a great summary of the difference between the versions.) What is single sign-on? The previous version, 1.1, is now largely deprecated. SAML 2.0 was introduced in 2005 and remains the current version of the standard. As a result, many security vendors use SAML as the basis for their commercial offerings to ensure interoperability. Because SAML is an open standard, it can coordinate security measure for different applications and systems from different vendors. Strictly speaking, SAML refers to the XML variant language used to encode all this information, but the term can also cover various protocol messages and profiles that make up part of the standard. It describes a framework that allows one computer to perform some security functions on behalf of one or more other computers. The Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is an open standard that allows security credentials to be shared by multiple computers across a network.
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