One sign-on to rule them all

Posted on 18 Jun 2009 at 11:12

What's the problem with implementing single sign-on for websites? Communications professional Simon Brock has the answer.

We did have to do some extra coding to decide which services to show to users, because CoSign is about authentication rather than authorisation. It's important to understand this difference - authentication is about proving you are who you say you are, while authorisation decides whether you're allowed to do that, whoever you are. All the systems described here are authentication systems only, and you'll need to implement some other form of authorisation in addition to them. To summarise our experience, we've found that Web SSO is something that can be implemented using easily available open-source software, but this isn't a total solution - all the systems we looked at had some limitations, but CoSign was the easiest to set up and does much of what you need.

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Simon Brock

Simon runs UK-based Wide Area Communications, the company behind websites such as The Spectator. He's a contributing editor to PC Pro and a fervent believer in open-source technologies..