Glossary

Single Sign-On (SSO)*

Single Sign-On (SSO) is a method of access control that enables a user to authenticate once and gain access to the resources of multiple software systems.

The term enterprise reduced sign-on is preferred by some authors because they believe single sign-on to be a misnomer: "no one can achieve it without an homogeneous IT infrastructure."

In a homogeneous IT infrastructure or at least where a single user entity authentication scheme exists or where user database is centralized, single sign-on is a visible benefit. All users in this infrastructure would have one or single authentication credentials. (e.g., Say an organization stores its user database in a LDAP database. All information processing systems can use such a LDAP database for user authentication and authorization, which in turn, means single sign-on has been achieved organization wide.)

* Source: Wikipedia®, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., August 10, 2007, via Wikipedia.org