Single Sign-On SSO

Single sign-on means one login opens everything a member of staff is allowed to use. One username, one password. The system on the office computer, the app on the delivery driver's phone, the branch in the next city, the same account opens all of them. A person signs in once in the morning, and the software stops asking for the rest of the day.

The point is not comfort. It is control. A business running four separate systems keeps four lists of who works there. Someone leaves, three lists get corrected, and one is forgotten. That forgotten account still works months later, and nobody notices, because nobody is looking at it. With one login there is one list. You switch a person off on their last day and every screen and every phone closes to them in the same minute.

The bigger risk in most small companies is not a stranger on the internet. It is the shared account, one manager login that four people know, written on a card in a drawer. When the till is short, or a price changed overnight, the record says manager, and manager is everybody. Giving each person their own account costs nothing and answers the question. Linkysoft treats that as the first step of any security review, long before anything expensive is discussed.

One door also makes a second lock worth fitting. A two-factor code is six digits from an app on the phone, typed after the password. One password and one code is safer than five passwords and no code, and staff only do it once a day instead of five times. That trade is why the two ideas are usually sold together.

There is a fair objection to all of this. If one login opens everything, a stolen password opens everything. True, which is why the code matters, and why a screen on a shared counter should sign itself out after a few quiet minutes. Ask a supplier two questions before you sign. How many minutes does it take to remove one person completely? And does the mobile app use the same accounts as the website, or a second list nobody remembers to update? When Linkysoft builds a web application the answer is one list, because a second one is a list that will be wrong one day.