Customers are becoming more and more vigilant when buying products and services whose functions fit seamlessly into their own security infrastructure. With data breaches appearing in the news every day, organizations have a critical responsibility to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the data they store and process from threats of theft and unauthorized access.
Security controls to minimize these risks are not only important for protection, they are invaluable in building and maintaining customer trust. This is where SSO to your Twilio SendGrid account comes in.
What is SSO?
Single Sign-On (SSO) is a trust-based authentication method. It enables users to securely access multiple applications with a single login after authenticating their identity. This simplifies the experience for users as it eliminates the need To Remember individual passwords for different applications and enter them again.
How does SSO work?
User credentials are stored and managed by a central system called the Identity Provider (IdP). When a user submits their credentials, the IdP authenticates their identity. Once validated, the information is simultaneously securely shared between applications and / or service providers to authorize access.
The many advantages of SSO
Manually managing access and permissions on a large scale for individual users can be challenging and risky. This is where SSO comes in. Centrally managed access provides a strong foundation for effective Access controls, enforcing the secure use of passwords / passphrases, improving the user experience and can reduce the risk of account compromise.
Implementing an SSO solution makes it easy to develop robust role-based access controls (RBAC) and / or team-based access controls (TBAC) that are enforced across devices. In addition, SSO helps simplify onboarding new employees, offboarding departures, assisting internal transfers, and regularly reviewing user access and permissions to mitigate internal risks.
The benefits of SSO are combined with the use of Multi-factor authentication (MFA). Combining the factors of knowledge (user credentials) with ownership (e.g. an authenticator app, like Authy) makes it much more difficult for anyone to gain unauthorized access, even if they have the username and password for an account.
SSO and your account security
Unless accounts are centrally managed, users need to remember usernames and passwords for each application / system they access. Users are then more likely to choose insecure passwords and reuse them, which can leave accounts vulnerable to preventable cyber threats.
Manual processes for managing user permissions in the event of status changes are time consuming and less effective than introducing SSO. Without SSO, a simple oversight could result in users being assigned inappropriate levels of access to sensitive systems. Or worse, offboarding users can accidentally keep access after they leave.
Account Takeovers (ATO) are usually a direct result of cyber threat actors who exploit leaked user account credentials such as passwords or API keys that are used for more than one application or system. The information is then used to carry out credential stuffing attacks, in which credentials are quickly tested against multiple systems in order to either gain unauthorized access to the user account or, in the case of a disclosed API key, bypass the authorization process completely.
An account takeover can lead to account fraud, which is not only costly but can also damage a company’s reputation. Implementing secure authentication controls such as SSO and ensuring that API keys are not hard-coded can drastically reduce the risk of an account being hijacked.
Using SSO, supported by a strong password policy and multi-factor authentication (MFA), is an effective strategy to reduce the attack surface for the most widespread cyber attack, phishing.
Minimizing the number of user credentials available for compromise while creating a failsafe to lock out attackers in the event of a successful phishing attack. These controls easily mitigate a significant portion of the risk posed by phishing attacks in advance.
For more account security best practices, see our article, 7 Best Practices for Protecting Your Twilio SendGrid Account and Sending Reputation.
Set up SSO for your Twilio SendGrid account
SSO for Twilio SendGrid is in open beta and will roll out for Marketing Campaigns Advanced Plans, Email API Pro, Premier and Custom Plans over the next few weeks.
Twilio SendGrid SSO is a session and user authentication service that enables customers to take the security of their account access management into their own hands. Use of the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0, a widely used one XML-based standard for authentication, all compliant IdPs should work with Twilio SendGrid, including Okta, Duo, Microsoft Azure Active Directory and Auth0.
Twilio SendGrid customers will be able to integrate and manage Twilio SendGrid accounts alongside the other applications with a secure password. To join the Open Beta and set up SSO for your Twilio SendGrid account, go to SendGrids Page with SSO documents.