Duo Single Sign-On for Box

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 Box 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 Box.

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 Box. Duo checks the user, device, and network against an application's policy before allowing access to the application.

Configure Single Sign-On

Before configuring Box with Duo SSO using Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0 authentication you'll first need to enable Duo Single Sign-On for your Duo account and configure a working authentication source.

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

Create the Box Application in Duo

1. Log on to the Duo Admin Panel and navigate to Applications → Protect an Application.

2. Locate the entry for Box with a protection type of "2FA with SSO hosted by Duo (Single Sign-On)" in the applications list. Click Protect to the far-right to start configuring Box. See Protecting Applications for more information about protecting applications with Duo and additional application options. You'll need the information on the Box page under Metadata later.

3. Optionally, if you'd like to manage your users' group memberships using Duo Single Sign-On, under Box Groups you can type the name of a Box group and which users should have access to that group by selecting Duo groups in the Duo Groups field. The members of those Duo groups will be given access to the Box group.

4. Box uses the Mail attribute, First name attribute, and Last name attribute when authenticating. We've mapped the bridge attributes to Duo Single Sign-On supported authentication source attributes as follows:

   Bridge Attribute	Active Directory	SAML IdP
   <Email Address>	mail	Email
   <First Name>	givenName	FirstName
   <Last Name>	sn	LastName

   If you are using non-standard attributes for your authentication source, check the Custom attributes box and enter the name of the attributes 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.

6. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Save button.

7. Click Download XML next to "XML Metadata file" button on the Box application's page in the Duo Admin Panel under Downloads to download the Duo Single Sign-On XML file. You'll need this file 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

We've already updated the Duo Box application hosted in Duo's service to support the Universal Prompt, so there's no action required on your part to update the application itself. If you created your Box application before March 2024, you can activate the Universal Prompt experience for users from the Duo Admin Panel. Box applications created after March 2024 have the Universal Prompt activated by default.

If you created your Box application before March 2024, it's a good idea to read the Universal Prompt Update Guide for more information, about the update process and the new login experience for users, before you activate the Universal Prompt for your application.

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.

The "Universal Prompt" area of the application details page shows that this application is "Ready to activate", 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" here and on the Universal Prompt Update Progress report.

Should you ever want to roll back to the traditional prompt, you can return to this setting and change it back to Show traditional prompt. However, this will still deliver the Duo prompt via redirect, not in an iframe. Keep in mind that support for the traditional Duo prompt ended for the majority of applications in March 2024.

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 Box SSO

Box SSO cannot be configured from the administrator interface. Contact Box support or your Box Customer Success Manager to have your account enabled for SSO, sending in the XML metadata file previously downloaded from the Duo Admin Panel.

You will be asked to provide attribute names for Email, First name, and Last name. You can optionally provide a Groups attribute if you want to allow Duo Single Sign-On to manage Box group membership.

You may also request that Box enable Just-In-Time provisioning to create new Box users in your account if they don't already exist after authenticating with Duo Single Sign-On.

Please provide the following Duo attributes:

Box Attribute	Duo Attribute
Email attribute	User.Email
First name attribute	User.FirstName
Last name attribute	User.LastName
Groups attribute (optional)	User.Groups

Continue with configuration once Box enables SSO for your account.

More information about Box's SSO support is available at the Box Support Site.

Enable SSO Group Management in Box

If you sent Box the group attribute you will now need to turn on group management settings. If you did not send Box your group attribute you can skip this section.

1. Log into Box as an administrative user.

2. Click on Admin Console and then Enterprise Settings on the left-hand side navigation bar.

3. Click on User Settings at the top of the page and scroll down to User Groups Settings.

4. Under "SSO Group Management" you can select how you would like SSO to manage group membership.

5. Click Save at the top of the page.

   

Verify SSO

1. Open up a browser that is not logged into Box. Go to https://app.box.com/login/.

2. Enter the email address for your Box account and click Next and then click Sign in with SSO.

3. Your browser will be automatically redirected to the Duo Single Sign-On login page. Enter your primary directory logon information, approve Duo two-factor authentication, and get redirected back to the Box site after authenticating.

Enforcing Box SSO

Now that you've verified that SSO with Box is working, you can enforce SSO logins for all users.

1. Log into Box as an administrative user.

2. Click on Admin Console and then Enterprise Settings on the left-hand side navigation bar.

3. Click on User Settings at the top of the page and scroll down to Configure Single Sign On (SSO) for All Users.

4. Click the slider under Step 2: Complete SSO activation.

5. A pop-up will appear asking you to confirm that you've tested authentication and have notified your users. Once you've agreed to their notifications you can click Enable for All Users.

6. Click Save at the top of the page.

   

Using SSO

You can log on to Box via Duo Single Sign-On using your organization's SSO login page e.g. https://yourorg.app.box.com/login. Clicking the Continue button on the login page redirects you 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

With another SAML identity provider as the Duo SSO authentication source, Duo SSO immediately redirects the login attempt to that SAML IdP for primary authentication. Users do not see the Duo SSO primary login screen.

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 Box to complete the login process.

* Universal Prompt experience shown.

Users can also enter their email address into the main Box login page https://app.box.com/login/ and click Sign In with SSO to be forwarded to the Duo Single Sign-On logon page.

If using the Box mobile app, tap "Login", enter your federated e-mail address and tap Next. Tap "Sign in with SSO" link at the bottom of the login screen, and then authenticate to Duo Single Sign-On. In the Box Sync desktop app, click "Use company credentials" and proceed as for the mobile app. In the Box Drive desktop app, enter your federated email address and click Next, then proceed as for the mobile and Sync apps.

You can also log into Box using Duo Central, our cloud-hosted portal which allows users to access all of their applications in one spot. Link to Box in Duo Central by adding it as an application tile. Once the tile has been added, log into Duo Central and click the tile for IdP-initiated authentication to Box.

Congratulations! Your Box 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.

Enable Remembered Devices

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

Troubleshooting

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