Duo Single Sign-On for SolarWinds Application Management

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 SolarWinds Application Management 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 SolarWinds Application Management.

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

Configure Single Sign-On

Before configuring SolarWinds Application Management 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 SolarWinds Application Management application in Duo.

Create the SolarWinds Application Management Application in Duo

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

2. Locate the entry for SolarWinds Application Management with the "SSO" label in the catalog. Click the + Add button to start configuring SolarWinds Application Management. See Protecting Applications for more information about protecting applications with Duo and additional application options. You'll need the information on the SolarWinds Application Management 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. SolarWinds Application Management uses the Mail attribute, First name attribute, and Last name attribute when authenticating. We've mapped these attributes to external authentication source attributes as follows:

   Default 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, 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 SolarWinds Application Management 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 SolarWinds Application Management 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 SolarWinds Application Management for SSO

1. Log into your SolarWinds Application Management account as an administrator.

2. In the sidebar menu, navigate to Settings → Organization Settings → Security. The "Security" page opens in a new tab.

3. Click SAML. The "SAML" page opens.

4. Make sure the Configuration tab is selected.

5. Under "Add SolarWinds URLs to Your Identity Provider", copy the Entity ID and paste it into the Duo Admin Panel Entity ID field, under "Service Provider".

   

6. In the Duo Admin Panel under "Metadata", copy the Issuer (Entity ID) and paste it into the SolarWinds Application Management Issuer (Entity ID) field, under "Paste In Your Identity Provider Information".

7. Return to the Duo Admin Panel. Copy the SAML URL and paste it into the SolarWinds Application Management SAML URL field.

   

8. Return to the Duo Admin Panel. Under "Downloads", click Copy Certificate and paste the certificate text into the SolarWinds Application Management Certificate field, including the -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- and -----END CERTIFICATE----- lines.

9. In SolarWinds Application Management, click Save.

10. Return to the Duo Admin Panel. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Save.

APM Integrated Experience

SolarWinds Application Management has an APM Integrated Experience toggle switch that allows you to share a common navigation for the four SolarWinds Application Management products: Loggly, AppOptics, Papertrail, and Pingdom. The APM Integrated Experience toggle switch is ON by default.

If you want to navigate a single SolarWinds Application Management product instead of using the common navigation, do the following:

1. Log into your SolarWinds Application Management account as an administrator.

2. In the top-right corner of the page, click the SolarWinds Application Management Suite icon.

3. Click the APM Integrated Experience toggle switch to OFF. The "Before you go..." pop-up window opens.

4. Click No, thanks. A page with a list of the four SolarWinds Application Management products opens.

5. Click your desired SolarWinds Application Management product tile to be redirected to the selected product page.

Learn more about SolarWinds Application Management SSO at SolarWinds Customer Success.

Group Mapping

You have the option to map Duo groups to different roles in SolarWinds Application Management. To map Duo groups, do the following:

1. Log into your SolarWinds Application Management account as an administrator.

2. In the sidebar menu, navigate to Settings → Organization Settings → Security. The "Security" page opens in a new tab.

3. Click SAML. The "SAML" page opens.

4. Click the Role Mapping tab.

5. Under "Organization Roles", enter a unique name for your organization administrator role into the Admin field.

6. Enter a unique name for your organization member role into the Member field.

7. Under "Product Roles", enter a unique name for your product owner role into the Owner field under your applicable product. There is an asterisk (*) next to the Owner field under your product that indicates the field is required.

8. Enter a unique name into the Admin and User fields for your product under "Product Roles", as required. These fields are optional. See the image below for an example using Loggly.

   

9. Repeat steps 7 and 8 for your other products under "Product Roles", as required.

10. Click Save.

11. Click the Enable Role Mapping toggle switch to ON. The "Enable Role Mapping" pop-up window opens.

12. Click Enable.

13. Return to the Duo Admin Panel. Navigate to Users → Groups and create the Duo groups with the same names that correspond to the roles you created in SolarWinds Application Management earlier.

    Example: If you created a role in the Loggly Owner field in SolarWinds Application Manager named loggly_owner, then you would create a correpsonding group in the Duo Admin Panel named loggly_owner. See the image below for an example.

14. Navigate to Users → Users and add users to the groups you created earlier.

15. Return to your SolarWinds Application Management application in Duo. Under "Service Provider", type the name of the Admin organization role you created in SolarWinds Application Management into the SolarWinds Application Management role field.

16. Click the Duo groups drop-down menu and select the group for the Admin organization role you created earlier.

17. Click + at next to the Duo Groups drop-down menu to add a new group row.

18. Repeat steps 11, 12, and 13 for the remaining roles you created in SolarWinds Application Management. See the image below for an example using Loggly.

    

19. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Save.

Using SSO

You can log on to SolarWinds Application Management by navigating to your SolarWinds Application Management page e.g., https://my.solarwinds.cloud. Click on your desired SolarWinds Application Management product. Click Log in with SSO. Enter your email address and then click Log in with Single Sign On 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 SolarWinds Application Management to complete the login process.

* Universal Prompt experience shown.

You can also log into SolarWinds Application Management using Duo Central, our cloud-hosted portal which allows users to access all of their applications in one spot. Link to SolarWinds Application Management 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 SolarWinds Application Management.

Congratulations! Your SolarWinds Application Management 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.

Enforce SSO

You can require that all users sign into SolarWinds Application Management using Duo Single Sign-On.

1. Log into your SolarWinds Application Management account as an administrator.

2. In the sidebar menu, navigate to Settings → Organization Settings → Security. The "Security" page opens in a new tab.

3. Click SAML. The "SAML" page opens.

4. In the top-right corner of the page, click the Enable SAML Integration toggle switch to ON. The "Enable SAML integration" pop-up window opens.

5. Click Enable.

Enable Remembered Devices

To minimize additional Duo two-factor prompts when switching between SolarWinds Application Management 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.