for User Management in the SaaS-based Systems

Problem

A cloud solution for managing user profiles inside a SaaS-ecosystem is a comprehensive software tool for user profile management in various systems. Plus, it allows ensuring the user profile integrity in a scope of the popular SaaS systems.

One of the key factors implemented in our solution is that it’s able to protect a company from human error. What if you need to create or change a user in the company’s Active Directory? Then our system will automatically create or change user profiles throughout the entirety of the SaaS systems that your company employs to increase performance.

This solution also provides a Single Sign-On (SSO) for the external SaaS systems to increase a satisfying experience and save time for the end user. Flexible security model customization (both internal and external) and a wide selection of privileges and assignable roles allow protecting the system from all types of abuse or inappropriate usage.

Security parameters, both internal and external, are regulated by security policy, which, in turn, offers a flexible configuration — it helps to fulfil the needs of any type of company/organization.

Solution

The offered cloud integration solution is primarily deployed in the Mule iON environment, so no extra hosting is required. Certain SaaS systems can easily be protected from unauthorized access with a duo of an intuitive GUI and a password.

Currently, the systems supported include: Active Directory, OpenLDAP, SalesForce, NetSuite, Brightidea, Yammer, Google Docs/Apps, and Database engines. SaaS system support is orchestrated through Mule iON connectors, which can easily be added to the main utility to increase a palette of the SaaS-supported systems.

All users are divided into a few categories:

• Guests.
• Global users and administrators.
• Users and corporate administrators.
• User groups with a selection of privileges granted through a group membership.

The registered users can request both external and internal privileges and roles endorsed by the managers. In turn, they can be global or assigned individually for the specific users or groups of users.

To enhance user data synchronization, a specific Windows-based component was designed — it tracks user profile/password changes, since Active Directory is expected to be the primary source of user-related data. Evidently, this confidential user data is encrypted before transferring and storing it. This measure helps avoid data leakages.

Apart from the user interface featured in the solution, non-visual SCIM API is also deployed — it can be used by the third-party apps to automate goals and tasks supported within a system.