[For beginners] Rough explanation! About SCIM and its role

It's been a long time.

This is Tama-chan from the System Solutions Department!

It's getting colder in the mornings and evenings, and it feels like autumn has arrived.

had a chance to use SCIM in my work

At first, I had no idea what SCIM was, but after studying it, I started to understand it a little more, so I thought I'd leave it here as a memorandum!

I hope that through this blog, I can help you understand what SCIM is.

What is SCIM?

SCIM stands for System for Cross-domain Identity Management, and is a standard protocol for automatically synchronizing user and group information between cloud services

Simply put, these are rules for managing login information

SCIM is one of the technologies that makes SSO (Single Sign On) possible!

Next, before looking at how SCIM specifically plays a role, let's check the meanings of the two words IdP and SP.

What is an IdP?

IdP is an abbreviation for Identify Provider, and it is a system that provides authentication information (user name and password) required to access cloud services

In other words, it is a service that saves your authentication information when you log in.

Major IdPs include Okta and Azure AD.

What is SP?

SP is an abbreviation for Service Provider, and refers to cloud service systems such as Office 365 and Slack.

If you look into the systems you often use, you'll find that they are actually SP!

 

About the role of SCIM

SCIM plays the role of intermediary between IdP and SP.

Specifically, we have changed the format so that the login information stored in the IdP can also be used in the SP.

As a result, if you edit the login information at the IdP, you will be able to log in to the SP with the edited login information.

In particular, if you need to create multiple users in SP (Office 365, Slack, etc.), you would normally have to create them for each SP, but

With SCIM, you can create a user once in IdP (Okta, Azure AD, etc.) and apply it to multiple SPs!

This is all about SCIM.

What do you think?

I hope that through this article you can deepen your understanding of SCIM even a little.

Reference website

SCIM (Okta) » Administrator by Request