The adoption of single sign-on and multifactor authentication in organisations: a critical evaluation using TOE framework

The proliferation of user credentials for system access coupled with the resulting security threats posed have led to the development of single sign-on (SSO) access control and multi-factor authentication (MFA) technologies. This paper provides an overview of these authentication mechanisms, highlighting the current state in the marketplace and describing the key enabling technologies. We conducted a qualitative analysis to identify the key factors facilitating and inhibiting of adoption of SSO and MFA by organisations using the TOE framework. The resulting analysis indicates a myriad of technologies, protocols and configurations that can be employed depending on the type of authentication implementation required. The findings suggest that a number of factors within the categories of the TOE framework affect organisational adoption both positively and negatively. Furthermore, there are key benefits to be gained from adopting SSO and MFA such as increased corporate security and reduced organisational costs of managing access control. There are also a number of key challenges to be overcome by organisations adopting SSO and MFA. These include ability to accommodate the complexity of multiple heterogeneous systems and to be resilient to new hacker tactics for a SSO and MFA solution to successfully fulfill its organisational purpose.