In many situations, authority to access a specific application is given to only chosen individuals, for security reasons. This can become an issue when that individual is out of the office for an extended period of time, and others who are dependent on this application, are left without the ability to properly perform their duties. Say for example, an employee is leaving on maternity leave. If she needs her counterpart to take over some of her tasks while she is out that employee might need additional access to systems and applications that she uses.
Often in order to allow other users to use the application, those with the authority give another user full authority to use the application while they are out of the office. Or they often leave their credentials with another qualified individual. Often if a user lends another employee their credentials when they are out the office, they are never disabled or revoked, leaving many employees with access to secure data. So how can access be securely given to another employee to allow them to continue work on a project while a manager or another employee is out of the office?
Credential delegation, which is the ability to give another entity permission to perform functions in an application that require your credentials, can be an asset to a company when situations such as this occur. By delegating your credentials to another employee, you give the user the authority to use your credentials to access the application without having to expose what the value of your credentials are. This allows a manager for example to specify a certain period of time where another individual can access the application. After that specified period of time, access is automatically revoked.
With a Single Sign On application, you can enable this feature and easily delegate your credentials to an individual. Once that time has finished, the application will automatically remove the right to use the credentials without having to manually remove it, so that the network remains secure.
Learn more about Single Sign On.