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You’ll need to get this information from your system for input into Award Force. X.509 certificate – this is what validates the identity provider so we can be sure it is a trusted source.Single sign-on service URL – this is the web address where the authentication process is initiate.Issuer URL – this is a unique web address from the identity provider.To set up SAML on an Award Force account you’ll need three things: For the user, it’s a seamless and simple process of clicking a button. The user won’t see any of this back-and-forth between the identity provider and the service provider. This is a bit like the hotel restaurant charging the correct room for dinner in our previous analogy. If Award Force is satisfied that the identity provider has done its job, the login is allowed.Īward Force will also look at the assertion to identify the user and make sure they’re logged into the correct account. When a user signs into Award Force using SAML, our platform will check what’s known as the SAML assertion to make sure the user is coming from a trusted source. In this example the hotel reception is the identity provider and the restaurant is the service provider.
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The restaurant and the gym trust that the hotel reception did a good job in their identity checking. The gym and restaurant don’t need to see your credit card and driver’s licence because the hotel reception already did that and confirmed your identity. Once you’ve checked in you can charge expenses throughout the hotel to your room, such as visiting the gym or eating at the restaurant. At the hotel reception, you hand over your credit card and provide identification like a passport or driver’s licence. It instead trusts the identity provider to do its job. The identity provider does the background work – checking usernames and passwords, while the service provider simply provides the service without having to validate the user’s identity. The second platform – in our case, Award Force– is the service provider. This is often a corporate identity management system such as Microsoft AD FS or OneLogin. The platform the user originates from is called the identity provider. Your participants will not be required to: There are several time-saving advantages to using SAML. This obviates the need to create a new account because users can use an already existing account. In simple terms, this means if you have an account on one platform you can sign into another completely different platform using your identity from the first platform. SAML provides a standard for authentication between two platforms. But what does it mean? What does it do? What is SAML? One of the options available through Award Force is called SAML, which stands for Security Assertion Markup Language. But what options are out there? And, how can Award Force help? You want to make it as easy as possible for your entrants to log into your awards program.
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