Today’s digital landscape demands organizations protect sensitive data while only authorized users gain access to critical systems.
Workday, an industry leader for finance and human resource cloud applications, offers an impressive step-up authentication process designed to strengthen security.
In this blog post we’ll dive deep into its features – such as enabling SAML authentication, setting up an IdP, editing rules or adding or editing them, creating step-up authentications sessions and monitoring privileged sessions.
Step-up authentication is a security mechanism that requires extra verification whenever a user attempts to gain access to restricted or sensitive items within a system, such as Workday.
Even after authenticating with traditional means, they will need an additional form of verification before accessing certain high-risk areas – adding another layer of protection against unintended access and improving overall system security.
SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) is an increasingly popular standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between parties, particularly between identity providers (IdPs) and service providers (SPs).
Workday supports SAML for Single Sign-On (SSO) and Single Logout (SLO) authentication to help organizations centrally manage user credentials while streamlining login processes.
1. Navigating to the Security Center: Locate and navigate to Workday’s Security Center.
2. Enabling SAML Authentication: Select this option to activate SAML authentication.
3. Specifying SAML Settings: Provide necessary SAML settings such as IdP metadata URL/file name/entity ID etc for SAML authentication.
4. Examine Your Configuration: Make sure that your SAML configuration is operating as intended by running a test to check its functionality.
An Identity Provider (IdP) for SAML services like Workday requires authenticating users and providing SAML assertions to Workday service provider (such as Okta, Azure AD or Ping Identity). Common IdPs include these solutions from Okta, Azure AD and Ping Identity.
1. Select an IdP: Determine which SAML IdP best meets your organization’s needs, then follow its documentation to configure the SAML integration—usually, this means configuring endpoints, certificates, and attributes.
2. Integrate IdP Metadata into Workday: After uploading IdP metadata into Workday, upload and test to make sure SAML authentication flows as expected.
3. Conduct A Comprehensive Integration Check
Once SAML authentication is activated, you can create rules to determine when additional step-up authentication is necessary.
These criteria could include the user’s role or action being undertaken or even how sensitive is the data that’s being accessed.
1. Locate and Open the Rule Editor: Navigating to the Security Centre and accessing its Rule Editor will allow you to define a new rule with conditions under which step-up authentication should take effect.
2 . Create and Edit New Rules: After editing an existing rule or creating one from scratch, modify or create one based on any specific conditions triggering step-up authentication and save any changes as new rules as separate files for editing or review by an admin user.
3. Set Your Authentication Method: Select an authentication method such as one-time passwords (OTPs) or biometric authentication to provide additional verification.
4. Save and Test Your Rule: Save the rule as a draft before testing to ensure it works as intended.
1. Determine Restricted Items: Identify any items or actions within your Workday tenant that require further verification
2. Step-Up Process by outlining additional authentication methods like SMS-based OTPs, push notifications or hardware tokens that will be employed.
3. Implement the Step-Up Process: Integrate Workday’s step-up process seamlessly with existing SAML setup.
4. Inform Users: Inform users about step-up authentication requirements and offer any required training sessions.
Monitoring privileged sessions is essential to the security of your Workday tenant.
By tracking and reviewing these sessions, you can detect and respond immediately to any suspicious activities that might take place within it.
1. Enable Session Monitoring:
Enable session monitoring in the Workday Security Center.
2. Set Up Alerts:
Configure alerts that alert administrators of any abnormal activity such as multiple failed login attempts or access to sensitive data.
3. Review Logs:
Regularly review session logs to detect any potential security vulnerabilities.
4. Take Action:
When suspicious activity is identified, take the appropriate actions such as revoking access or conducting a security audit.
Its Workday’s step-up authentication provides organizations with an effective security framework to safeguard sensitive data and operations.
By following best practices and striking a balance between security and usability, organizations can successfully implement security measures while meeting compliance requirements and ensuring user satisfaction.
Step-up authentication should not just be seen as a mere security measure but rather seen as an investment that protects organizational assets while upholding user trust.
As security threats continue to evolve, Workday’s authentication system offers both flexibility and strength to meet current and emerging security threats.
Remarks: To ensure a successful implementation, successful implementation requires careful planning, monitoring, and adaptation to ever-evolving security needs. Organizations should regularly evaluate and update their authentication policies in order to maintain optimal user security while also offering exceptional user experiences.
