One of the goals of Technology Services at Texas A&M University is to consolidate services and optimize the digital experience for faculty, staff and students. The IT teams are working toward this goal by streamlining login screens to provide a more seamless login experience and enhanced security.

From a technical perspective, linking many technology services to a single sign-on (SSO) location helps make the management of integrations easier. SSO is a widely used authentication technique that enables users to sign in to numerous programs or systems with just one set of credentials. By consolidating service logins this way, engineers can manage integrations programmatically and segment each integration so there is no effect on other applications when a service provider, like Zoom, Canvas or LinkedIn Learning, makes a change to their technology. SSO streamlines the management of administrative processes by lowering the number of accounts administrators must monitor. Security rules are simplified.

From a user perspective, there are many benefits to SSO: 

1. There are fewer passwords to remember.
2. Enforcement of two-factor authentication and strong password standards further boosts security for each university community member’s account. 
3. Productivity is increased as employees and students have quicker logins and ease of access to important applications and services.

Currently, Canvas, LinkedIn Learning and Zoom all use our newer, modern single sign-on experience when users log in. As Technology Services works to improve identity and access management across the university, more services will be onboarded. The next product slated for this authentication process is Google Workspace with small changes to the login screen.