Dropbox debuts single sign-on to give companies streamlined management, increased security, and fewer logins

Dropbox on Tuesday announced it has implemented single sign-on (SSO), a feature that lets users log in just once to a central identity provider and securely gain access to all of their business apps. The cloud storage startup’s pitch is simple: since businesses’ existing trusted identity providers are in charge of the authentication process, SSO makes sense for Dropbox as it menas administrators don’t have to worry about managing multiple applications.

Dropbox actually announced SSO support last month along with the new name for its business offering. Now the company has released the feature, and is thus touting the following advantages:

• Streamlined management: SSO helps admins securely manage access to all company applications in one centralized place. In addition, SSO helps admins easily add and remove account access for team members.
• Increased security: Any password policies that admins have established for the corporate network (change passwords every month, set password requirements to a certain length, etc.) will also be in effect for Dropbox through SSO.
• Easier for your team: SSO limits the number of usernames and passwords employees have to remember in order to access their applications. Users now only have to enter their login credentials once, which provides a more unified experience.

If you’re using Dropbox, you can turn on SSO in one of two ways. Dropbox has partnered with multiple identity providers, including Ping Identity, OneLogin, Okta, Centrify; you can configure yours here. Dropbox also integrates systems that support the SSO industry standard, SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language), meaning you can set up a custom provider via the Authentication tab in the Dropbox admin console.

In short, SSO is part of Dropbox’s broader push to cut down on the friction and annoyance of running the service as a company-wide offering. As it continues to compete with the likes of Google Drive and Microsoft’s SkyDrive, businesses are a big focus as they can significantly drive revenue.