Best Practice: understand SAML & OIDC differences for SSO

Scenario

If one has to choose between Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and OpenID Connect (OIDC) for Single sign-on (SSO), it’s good to know the differences between each of them.

Recommendation

In most cases a customer or an application set the decision for a SSO standard. The following table will outline the benefits or tradeoffs. Please do not interpret this information to determine the “best” standard.

  SAML – Security Assertion Markup Language OIDC – OpenID Connect
Metadata URL https://ucs-sso.domainname/simplesamlphp/saml2/idp/metadata.php https://ucs-sso.domain.name/.well-known/openid-configuration
underlying Protocol XML JSON
UCS interation builtin by default installed via the App Center
Allow user or group access to SSO Adding a new external SAML service provider and assign them Adding a new external OIDC service provider and assign predefined configuration openid-connect-provider
Configure transmitted user attributes to SP Yes No, but requested attributes can be configured at the SP
SP initiated SSO Yes No
IdP initiated SSO Yes Yes
Example for preconfigured App Center Apps that work out of the box NextCloud None
Share certificates for loadbalancing in a multi server environment builtin with stunnel configure manually
Users can review requested attributes and deny access upon first login No Yes

Further reading

Questions?

If you’re not sure whether the recommendations will fit into your scenario, please ask your Professional Services contact person, or create a new topic referencing this article.

2 Likes
Mastodon