Bridge the Single Sign-On security gap with Bitwarden Access Intelligence

For many enterprises, single sign-on (SSO) may seem like the ultimate solution for managing employee access to the applications and systems they require every day, but what happens when an application or system does not support SSO? This is a mounting challenge for businesses as they grapple with the promises of SSO and the reality of day-to-day enterprise application use. Explore how Bitwarden and SSO solutions work together to provide complete identity security across the enterprise. 

SSO is leveraged by enterprises across the globe to securely manage employee authentication into applications, solutions, and services with one set of credentials — streamlining the login process. While SSO may seem like the most convenient and secure solution for employee authentication, up to two-thirds of critical business applications are not SSO-enabled, according to 451 Research. This means even when organizations have an identity provider and SSO process in place, there are significant gaps in the applications that support it. These security gaps lead to unmanaged applications where users create their own credentials, introducing risky password practices and exploitable vulnerabilities.

Dive deeper: Why SSO isn’t enough

With the ongoing introduction of new applications combined with distributed workforces, more and more enterprise applications are adopted by employees but remain unknown to IT teams. This particular type of unmanaged applications, dubbed shadow IT, also poses enterprise security risks because access cannot  be effectively managed or regulated. Shadow IT often leads to over-granted access even after an employee has departed the company. 

To achieve complete identity and credential security across the enterprise, businesses secure their employee authentication with both SSO and a password manager. With a password manager, organizations can effectively manage credentials to applications and systems that fall outside of SSO management. Role-based access controls, organization-wide policies, credential lifecycle management, and company owned vaults help ensure employees only access the credentials they need. Plus, most modern password managers, like Bitwarden, support SSO integrations for even more streamlined logins.

To help bridge the security gap between what is managed by SSO and what is not, Bitwarden Password Manager offers Access Intelligence, an enterprise feature for identifying real-time credential risks, uncovering shadow IT, and empowering employees to take action.

Uncover shadow IT: Discover applications where users have saved login credentials inside Bitwarden that were otherwise unknown to the IT department. Easily prioritize business critical applications for immediate risk remediation. 

Reduce risky password practices: Ensure enhanced security for every application, no matter where that access is managed. Reduce vulnerabilities like reused, exposed, and weak passwords.

Empower employees: Give users the tools they need to be a part of the secure solution. Bitwarden enables IT to directly trigger notifications to end users when a password is at-risk and offers step-by-step guidance on how to fix it.

Access Intelligence is available for every Bitwarden Enterprise subscription with no additional cost. With Bitwarden, IT teams can efficiently integrate with existing identity providers and securely manage application access across the enterprise.

Access Intelligence is a timely addition to the Bitwarden Password Manager, as two-thirds (67%) of IT managers say credential access management is very important for their organizations but, almost half (48%) report that their current system for monitoring password health and access is ineffective.

Bitwarden helps organizations make secure authentication easy and ensures accounts accessed outside of SSO receive the same level of security and attention. 

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