Duo Single Sign-On for 9Line

Overview

As business applications move from on-premises to cloud hosted solutions, users experience password fatigue due to disparate logons for different applications. Single sign-on (SSO) technologies seek to unify identities across systems and reduce the number of different credentials a user has to remember or input to gain access to resources.

While SSO is convenient for users, it presents new security challenges. If a user's primary password is compromised, attackers may be able to gain access to multiple resources. In addition, as sensitive information makes its way to cloud-hosted services it is even more important to secure access by implementing two-factor authentication and zero-trust policies.

About Duo Single Sign-On

Duo Single Sign-On is our cloud-hosted SSO product which layers Duo's strong authentication and flexible policy engine on top of 9Line logins. Duo Single Sign-On acts as an identity provider (IdP), authenticating your users using existing on-premises Active Directory (AD) or another SSO IdP. Duo SSO prompts users for two-factor authentication and performs endpoint assessment and verification before permitting access to 9Line.

Duo Single Sign-On is available in Duo Premier, Duo Advantage, and Duo Essentials plans, which also include the ability to define policies that enforce unique controls for each individual SSO application. For example, you can require that Salesforce users complete two-factor authentication at every login, but only once every seven days when accessing 9Line. Duo checks the user, device, and network against an application's policy before allowing access to the application.

Configure Single Sign-On

Before configuring 9Line with Duo SSO using Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0 authentication you'll first need to configure a working authentication source.

Once you have your SSO authentication source working, continue to the next step of creating the 9Line application in Duo.

Create the 9Line Application in Duo

1. Log in to the Duo Admin Panel and navigate to Applications → Application Catalog.

2. Locate the entry for 9Line with the "SSO" label in the catalog. Click the + Add button to start configuring 9Line. See Protecting Applications for more information about protecting applications with Duo and additional application options. You'll need the information on the 9Line page under Metadata later.

3. No active Duo users can log in to new applications until you grant access. Update the User access setting to grant access to this application to users in selected Duo groups, or to all users. Learn more about user access to applications. If you do not change this setting now, be sure to update it so that your test user has access before you test your setup.

   This setting only applies to users who exist in Duo with "Active" status. This does not affect application access for existing users with "Bypass" status, existing users for whom the effective Authentication Policy for the application specifies "Bypass 2FA" or "Skip MFA", or users who do not exist in Duo when the effective New User Policy for the application allows access to users unknown to Duo without MFA.

4. 9Line uses the Mail attribute when authenticating. We've mapped the <Email Address> to external authentication source attributes as follows:

   Default Attribute	Active Directory	SAML IdP
   <Email Address>	mail	Email

   If you are using a non-standard email attribute for your authentication source, check the Custom attributes box and enter the name of the attribute you wish to use instead.

5. You can adjust additional settings for your new SAML application at this time — like changing the application's name from the default value, enabling self-service, or assigning a group policy.

6. Keep the Duo Admin Panel tab open. You will come back to it later.

Duo Universal Prompt

The Duo Universal Prompt provides a simplified and accessible Duo login experience for web-based applications, offering a redesigned visual interface with security and usability enhancements.

Universal Prompt	Traditional Prompt

The Duo 9Line application supports the Universal Prompt by default, so there's no additional action required on your part to start using the newest authentication experience.

Activate Universal Prompt

Activation of the Universal Prompt is a per-application change. Activating it for one application does not change the login experience for your other Duo applications. Universal Prompt is already activated for new 9Line applications at creation.

The "Universal Prompt" area of the application details page shows that this application's status is "Activation complete", with these activation control options:

• Show traditional prompt: Your users experience Duo's traditional prompt via redirect when logging in to this application.
• Show new Universal Prompt: (Default) Your users experience the Universal Prompt via redirect when logging in to this application.

The application's Universal Prompt status shows "Activation complete" both here and on the Universal Prompt Update Progress report.

For the time being, you may change this setting to Show traditional prompt to use the legacy experience. Keep in mind that support for the traditional Duo prompt ended for the majority of applications in March 2024. This option will be removed in the future.

Universal Update Progress

Click the See Update Progress link to view the Universal Prompt Update Progress report. This report shows the update availability and migration progress for all your Duo applications. You can also activate the new prompt experience for multiple supported applications from the report page instead of visiting the individual details pages for each application.

Enable 9Line for SSO

1. Log into your 9Line account as an administrator.

2. At the top of the page, navigate to Management → Organizations. The "Organizations" page opens.

3. On the right side of your organization row, click the menu icon and then click Edit. The "Update Organization" pop-up window opens.

4. Under "Features", click the Single Sign-On enabled toggle switch to ON.

5. Under "Single Sign-On", copy the Reply URL (Assertion Consumer Service URL) and paste it into the Duo Admin Panel Reply URL (Assertion Consumer Service URL) field, under "Service Provider".

   

6. Return to the 9Line "Update Organization" pop-up window. Click the Identity Provider (IdP) drop-down menu and select DUO (Preview).

7. In the 9Line "Update Organization" pop-up window, click the Binding drop-down menu and select HTTP-POST.

8. Under "SSO Domains", enter your domain into the Add Domain field and then click +.

   Example: If your email address is user@example.com, then your domain is example.com.

9. Return to the Duo Admin Panel. Under "Metadata", copy the following fields and paste them into their respective fields in the 9Line "Update Organization" pop-up window:

   • Issuer (IdP Entity ID) URL into the 9Line Issuer (IdP Entity ID) field.

   • Sign-in URL into the 9Line Sign-in URL field.

   • Sign-out URL into the 9Line Sign-out URL field.

   

10. In the 9Line web address bar, copy the entity ID and paste it into the 9Line Identifier (SP Entity ID) field.

    Example: If the URL in the web address bar is https://portal.9line911.com/management/organizations, then the entity ID is https://portal.9line911.com.

11. Return to the Duo Admin Panel. Under "Downloads", click Download certificate.

12. In the Duo Admin Panel, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Save.

13. Return to the 9Line "Update Organization" pop-up window. Click Choose File and open the certificate file you downloaded from the Duo Admin Panel earlier.

14. In the 9Line "Update Organization" pop-up window, click Update.

Learn more about 9Line SSO at 9Line Support.

Using SSO

You can log on to 9Line by navigating to your 9Line SSO page e.g., https://portal.9line911.com/login. Click Login with SSO. Enter your email address and then click Login with SSO to be redirected to Duo Single Sign-On to begin authentication.

Active Directory Login

With Active Directory as the Duo SSO authentication source, enter the primary username (email address) on the Duo SSO login page and click or tap Next.

Enter the AD primary password and click or tap Log in to continue.

Enable Duo Passwordless to log in to Duo SSO backed by Active Directory authentication without entering a password in the future.

SAML Login

The SAML login experience depends on your Duo SSO routing rules configuration.

With another SAML identity provider as the only enabled Duo SSO authentication source and the default routing rule in place, Duo SSO immediately redirects the login attempt to that SAML IdP for primary authentication. Users do not see the Duo SSO primary login screen.

If you have multiple enabled SAML authentication sources or custom routing rules in place, then users enter their primary username (email address) on the Duo SSO login page and then will be redirected to the correct external SAML identity provider.

Duo Authentication

Successful verification of your primary credentials by Active Directory or a SAML IdP redirects back to Duo. Complete Duo two-factor authentication when prompted and then you'll return to 9Line to complete the login process.

* Universal Prompt experience shown.

9Line supports SP-initiated authentication only, meaning that you must start your SSO login from that application's sign-in page. You won't be able to add 9Line as an application tile in Duo Central for IdP-initiated logins.

Congratulations! Your 9Line users now authenticate using Duo Single Sign-On.

See the full user login experience, including expired password reset (available for Active Directory authentication sources) in the Duo End User Guide for SSO.

Grant Access to Users

If you did not already grant user access to the Duo users you want to use this application be sure to do that before inviting or requiring them to log in with Duo.

Enable Remembered Devices

To minimize additional Duo two-factor prompts when switching between 9Line and your other Duo Single Sign-On SAML applications, be sure to apply a shared "Remembered Devices" policy to your SAML applications.

Automated Provisioning

This application does not support automated creation and management of users and groups from Duo using SCIM 2.0 provisioning.

Troubleshooting

Need some help? Try searching our Knowledge Base articles or Community discussions. For further assistance, contact Support.