Google Apps expands identity services with SAML and OIDC to connect apps securely
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Millions of businesses rely on Google to be smart about how we protect employee logins to Google Apps services like Google Drive and Gmail. Today we're making it easier to use that smart account security by giving employees secure single sign on access to a wider set of SaaS and custom-built apps on desktop and mobile devices. We’re enhancing our OpenID Connect (OIDC) Identity Provider support that can already be used with many SaaS apps in the Google Apps Marketplace, and adding support for SAML 2.0 (Security Assertion Markup Language) for more than 15 popular SaaS providers. We’re also making it easy for admins to add new custom SAML app integrations.
These single sign-on options help us address the growing demand for a central cloud based identity service and customers like Netflix are using Google’s identity services to make it easy for their employees to sign in to services.
“At Netflix we leveraged Google’s OpenID Connect standards support as part of our migration to a 100% cloud based single sign on solution.” - Justin Slaten, Manager, Enterprise Technology & Client Systems at Netflix
Google's identity services provide even more security on mobile when combined with Google Apps enterprise mobile management controls like password strength, lock screen requirements and app management. These can work in tandem with the increasing number of mobile security options, from hardware such as fingerprint readers, to software such as Google’s Smart Lock. Our Google Smart Lock features are available to all Google Accounts including those used at work. And we provide identity services and mobile management as part of Google Apps for Work at no additional cost. Learn more about how you can use Google identity services for work in our new Identity whitepaper.
"Google Apps identity service has made single sign on to services we use every day like Salesforce and Zendesk much easier for end users, who save an hour per month; our support team, which has seen a 25% reduction in support tickets; and our IT team, which spends 20% less time on troubleshooting." - Vadmin Solovey, Founder & CTO, DoIT International
Developers who don’t yet use single sign on to Google Accounts for work can follow our API guides in the Google Identity Platform documentation to enable these new features.
Want to learn more about best practices in this space? Hear Justin Slaten from Netflix share his insights on providing stronger identity and login protections for employees at the upcoming Identify 2015 events in New York, San Francisco and London and hosted by Ping Identity. There, you can also hear Eric Sachs, Google’s Product Management Director for Identity, discuss how these same standards are being used in work and consumer identity systems.