Duo Single Sign-On for Zabbix

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 Zabbix 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 Zabbix.

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

Configure Single Sign-On

Before configuring Zabbix 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 Zabbix application in Duo.

Create the Zabbix Application in Duo

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

2. Locate the entry for Zabbix 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 Zabbix. See Protecting Applications for more information about protecting applications with Duo and additional application options. You'll need the information on the Zabbix page under Downloads later.

3. Zabbix uses the Mail attribute, Username 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
   <Username>	sAMAccountName	Username
   <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.

4. 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.

5. 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 Zabbix 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 Zabbix 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 Zabbix for SSO

1. Log into your Zabbix account as an administrator.

2. In the web address bar, make note of the Zabbix domain, and include /zabbix at the end. You will need it later.

   Example: If the URL in your web address bar is http://ec1-23-45-678-901.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com/zabbix/zabbix.php?action=dashboard, then you will need http://ec1-23-45-678-901.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com/zabbix.

3. In the left menu sidebar, navigate to Users → Authentication. The "Authentication" page opens.

4. Click the SAML settings tab.

5. Click the Enable SAML authentication checkbox.

6. Return to the Duo Admin Panel. Under "Metadata", copy the IdP entity ID and paste it into the Zabbix IdP entity ID field.

7. Return to the Duo Admin Panel. Copy the SSO service URL and paste it into the Zabbix SSO service URL field.

   

8. In Zabbix, type UserName into the Username attribute field.

9. Type zabbix into the SP entity ID field.

10. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Update.

11. Return to the Duo Admin Panel. Enter the Zabbix domain you noted earlier into the Path to Zabbix UI field, under "Service Provider".

12. In the Duo Admin Panel, type zabbix into the SP entity ID field.

    

13. Under "Downloads", click Download certificate.

14. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save.

15. Locate the certificate file you downloaded from Duo earlier and rename it to idp.crt.

16. To configure the certificate file, go to Zabbix Documentation and follow the instructions in step 1, under the "Setting up Zabbix" section.

Group Mapping

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

1. Log into your Zabbix account as an administrator.

2. In the left menu sidebar, navigate to Users → Authentication. The "Authentication" page opens.

3. Click the SAML settings tab.

4. Click the Enable JIT provisioning checkbox.

5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Configure JIT provisioning checkbox.

6. Type groups into the Group name attribute field.

7. Type UserName into the User name attribute field.

8. Type LastName into the User last name attribute field.

9. Click Add next to User group mapping. The "New user group mapping" pop-up window opens.

10. Enter the name of the existing SAML group you want to map into the SAML group pattern field. Make note of this SAML group name. You will need it later.

11. Next to User groups, click Select. The "User groups" pop-up window opens.

12. Click the checkboxes next to the applicable groups you want to map to, and then click Select.

13. Next to User role, click Select. The "User roles" pop-up window opens.

14. Click the desired role for your SAML group.

15. In the "New user group mapping" pop-up window, click Add.

16. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Update.

17. Return to the Duo Admin Panel. Under "Service Provider", enter the SAML group name you noted earlier into the Zabbix Group field.

18. In the Duo Admin Panel, click the Duo groups drop-down menu and select the applicable Duo groups to map to.

    

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

Learn more about Zabbix SSO at Zabbix Documentation.

Using SSO

You can log on to Zabbix by navigating to your Zabbix SSO page, which is the Zabbix domain you noted earlier e.g., http://ec1-23-45-678-901.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com/zabbix. Click Sign in with Single Sign-On (SAML) 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

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 Zabbix to complete the login process.

* Universal Prompt experience shown.

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

Congratulations! Your Zabbix 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 Zabbix 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.