This form of authentication ensures that credentials are only sent to the IdP directly. Then, SAML transfers the identity information to the service providers. Increased Security - SAML provides a single point of authentication, which happens at a secure identity provider. In the example above, that user could have clicked on any of the other icons in their dashboard and been promptly logged in without ever having to enter more credentials! This allows for a faster authentication process and less expectation of the user to remember multiple login credentials for every application. Improved User Experience - Users only need to sign in one time to access multiple service providers. Salesforce checks this response, and if it looks good, the employee is granted access! Benefits of SAML Authentication

Since the employee has already authenticated with Auth0, Auth0 verifies the session and sends the user back to Salesforce with a SAML Response. Salesforce sends the employee back to Auth0 with a SAML Request that asks Auth0 to authenticate the user.

They click on the Salesforce icon, and Salesforce recognizes that the user wants to log in via SAML. The Wizova employee signs into the Wizova dashboard with Auth0. The service provider would be Salesforce. In the scenario above, the identity provider would be the IdP that Wizova uses, Auth0. Service Provider - Trusts the identity provider and authorizes the given user to access the requested resource. Identity Provider - Performs authentication and passes the user's identity and authorization level to the service provider. It is an XML-based open-standard for transferring identity data between two parties: an identity provider (IdP) and a service provider (SP). SAML stands for Security Assertion Markup Language. You click on the Salesforce icon, some magic happens in the background, and before you know it, you're signed into Salesforce without ever entering any credentials!Īs you might have guessed, the 'magic' was actually SAML in action. Once you sign in to this dashboard, you're presented with the icons of all of the external services the company uses: Salesforce, Expensify, Jira, AWS, and more. They've given you a work email address and access to a dashboard. You just started working at a new company, Wizova. Before jumping into the technical jargon, let's look at an example that demonstrates what SAML is and why it's beneficial.

Jira client based view