What is ADFS?

Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) is a Single Sign-On (SSO) solution created by Microsoft. As a component of Windows Server operating systems, it provides users with authenticated access to applications that are not capable of using Integrated Windows Authentication (IWA) through Active Directory (AD). Developed to provide flexibility, ADFS gives organisations the ability to control their employees’ accounts while simplifying the user experience: employees only need to remember a single set of credentials to access multiple applications through SSO. How does ADFS work? ADFS manages authentication through a proxy service hosted between AD and the target application. It uses a Federated Trust, linking ADFS and the target application to grant access to users. This enables users to log onto the federated application through SSO without needing to authenticate their identity on application directly. The authentication process generally follows these four steps: The user navigates to a URL provided by.