Build vs buy: What you have to know when adding SSO authentication

Every team who builds a new application has to choose between building the application from scratch in-house or taking resourceful help from outside sources. Outside help makes tasks easier. Similar is the case of building SSO authentication solutions for customers.

A third-party SSO authentication solution can be a helpful solution. With an experienced and highly skilled team, they have more adaptability to the customer requirements in terms of authentication and user management. 

If you want your services/products to appeal to a wide array of potential customers, it’s better to have an effectively working identity management system. Users don’t like to wait around or face any issues with identification or login. Hence, they may even feel like not coming back again if they face such issues.

Organizations blend several strategies to meet the endless customer demands, including social login, SSO, and passwordless solutions. However, these advancements and solutions will not have the same features. They will keep on evolving with enhanced security and customer requirements. That’s why companies need to be aligned with all the latest transitions in terms of these technologies. Through this, they can satisfy their customers to the fullest. 

Users need to be able to log in into different scenarios and get maximized support from organizations. The way to log in needs to be smooth, reliable, and secure. Will building this from scratch be beneficial for organizations? Will they be able to stay aligned with the security requirements, customer demands, and more? 

Let’s learn what wins when buying vs. building SSO authentication solutions for customers. Let’s begin!

Do my technical teams have the bandwidth to develop features that are not core products?

Can technical teams build an SSO authentication solution that isn’t their core product or service? Well, the answer lies in the size or age of your company. Building an entirely new solution would become problematic if you are a small company or have been operating for not very long. From the increased costs to time-consuming processes, developing such new features would be a hectic task.

That’s not it. Can you really take out a few of the team members from the technical or engineering team from their existing projects and let them handle an entirely new project that they probably haven’t done before? Doesn’t make sense, right? 

In addition, you would also notice different opportunity costs in sudden developments taking place to the SSO application/solution. In addition, the service that you are making your engineers work for isn’t a service that acts as your core product. As a result, chances of error are widely present, and there will be finite resources in terms of time and engineering. 

There will be less confidence in building the system as your engineers don’t have this core specialization or time to fulfill the required tasks to a satisfactory level.

This means you would have less time and resources to build something from which you want to leverage competitive benefit. Hence, things can become more complex and may even drive away potential customers.

Do my IT developers need to become experts in SAML, Azure AD, and all other SSO protocols?

Building an SSO authentication solution is a delicate task. Take one step wrong, leading to heavy consequences in terms of security and usability. IT developers must understand SSO protocols’ importance and main aspects to ensure seamless workflow. 

You may even notice several security risks aligned with any mistakes you make when implementing SAML, Azure AD, and other SSO protocols. Knowing all these aspects is crucial for IT developers as it will make tasks feasible and easier. 

Although IT developers have the potential to learn all about these things. However, time and skills also matter. This will be an entirely different and new learning curve for them, and they will have their existing tasks in hand. Ramping up the work they do with the SSO solutions will take time.

A solid understanding of the SSO authentication flow is crucial for engineers and IT developers. In addition, they should also understand the basics of SAML protocol.

However, someone with very little knowledge about SSO needs to research it. This will enable them to set up everything without any faults. After all, these aspects are essential for building a custom SSO solution for customers. 

Some of the main parts you would need to configure include SAML service, strategy for authentication, and a SAML controller. You need an efficient strategy to ensure that the users can authenticate accurately. 

How do I respond to customer requests for adding new identity providers?

Keeping up with consumer demands is one of the essential parts of business success. Companies can’t continue growing if they don’t have any customers. That’s why aligning the services per customer demands is crucial. This building ask isn’t as easy as just putting the user ID and password.

SSO authentication service isn’t something you can do once and enjoy forever. It keeps requiring changes based on current demands and conditions. Companies can integrate several IdPs or Identity providers with their application or website. As a result, customers with diversified IdPs can use such apps or websites without hassle. 

Businesses may face challenging situations when building SSO or SAM for the IdPs. It’s because different IdPs have different ways of handling the SAML flow. As a result, making changes to it won’t be an easy task.

Even if your IT developers’ team is skilled enough, it could still take a lot of time to build it flawlessly while integrating many IdPs to offer Directory Sync or SSO for customers. Several researches show that it can take months or even years to complete the task of building SSO capabilities with the features customers require. 

Will we be able to develop, maintain and update SSO authentication solutions in the long term?

Do we have the bandwidth to do this for the long term? As discussed previously, IdPs and the maintenance of other such integrations are crucial. Without maintenance, problems may arise in the future. With every integration with the SSO authentication solutions, you will require codes and tests. These aspects must be updated and maintained regularly, or else there can be code decay. 

However, that doesn’t mean that the entire solution needs to be changed after you build it. You have to ensure taking care of the additional tasks during integration. It includes taking care of it and keeping an eye on the monitoring system. Hence, its time and performance depend on maintenance.

Keeping the SSO updated and maintained also ensures that your customers get the best services ever, and they might want to come back again and again due to that. However, without sufficient knowledge and habit of building SSO, teams in companies may find it difficult to take things. Taking outside help may make tasks more straightforward.

Either your team may lack resources, technical expertise, or both when adding new updates or features. 

Reduced Risks in Terms of Security

When businesses manage their SSO by themselves, there will be difficulties, as discussed. Does your team change or update the password hashing algorithm? Usually, user data or log-in-related matters are the most vulnerable to hackers. Hence, companies must ensure that such things don’t happen in their applications or websites. As a result, they need effective measures that can sometimes be difficult for the in-house team if they aren’t experienced with it.

This can lead to security breaches and drive away potential customers and revenue. Along with that, companies can also face adverse consequences of such acts. However, buying SSO solutions means that the service provider will ensure all the security related to it. They have a guarantee that no such security breaches can take place.

They have next-level security crucial for effective maintenance. Compared to them, your in-house team won’t have enough awareness of security development. Sometimes, they won’t even know if any security breaches are taking place or if the SO solution is vulnerable to attacks and needs an upgrade. 

However, a well-chosen service provider for building your SSO solution means they will safeguard the system effectively – benefiting both your customers and business.  

So, Why Do You Need a Partner Like Cryptr for the Long Term?

Bringing an outsourced companion for handling all the building and maintenance of SSO authentication solutions can benefit companies. If a company has a huge business with more than 10k employees, then it won’t be a problem for them to build their own in-house team for creating and maintaining SSO. Over the years, the need for better security and convenience in terms of authentication and user management has increased.

As a result, effective services are crucial if you have less time and resources when building the system for SSO. In addition, an experienced partner like Cryptr can offer multiple benefits. You can provide your customers with enhanced user experience, better authentication, and other advanced features. 

In addition, with exceptional experience and a highly skilled team, Cryptr can ensure reliable services with continuous maintenance. The security measures used by Cryptr to ensure seamless authentication include API security, encryption, advanced firewall protection, and robust system management. At the same time, Cryptr’s highly functional infrastructure and technological advancement can lead to valuable results.

Conclusion

IT developers, development teams, and engineers are a company’s valuable assets. They have their roles and specialties. However, what if you try to grab them from their role for a while and put them in someone else’s shoes? They will be able to understand the different perspectives, but they won’t be able to build the entire perspective from scratch. It happens when we talk about building SSO in-house in a company where it’s not a core specialty. 

Even small companies may see increased costs and resource usage if creating the solution by themselves. The people who benefit from in-house services in terms of SSO authentication solutions are big companies who can build a professional team for it.

As a result, whether you buy or build SSO authentication solutions depends on the size of your company and your team’s core specialty. 

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