SWA app integrations

Secure Web Authentication (SWA) is an Okta technology that provides Single Sign-On (SSO) functionality to external web applications that don't support federated protocols. These include Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), Web Services Federation (WS-Fed), or OpenID Connect (OIDC).

Administrators can set the credentials for the application, or the end user can enter a specific username and password. Okta keeps the credentials for that application inside a secure store, encrypted with strong AES-256 encryption. After setting the credentials, end users only need to authenticate with Okta, and then they can SSO directly into the application.

Admins can make the SWA credentials match the user's Okta credentials by configuring the sign-in options for that SWA app integration.

If the admins don't set the credentials, then Okta prompts users to enter their username and password the first time they launch the app integration. If the sign-in request fails, they need to verify their credentials for that external application and try again.

After signing in, the user clicks the app integration icon on their dashboard. Okta populates the username and password and securely posts the credentials over SSL to the application's sign-in page. The external application automatically signs the user in.

Admins can browse the OIN catalog and set the filter to search for app integrations with SWA as a functionality. When added to an org and assigned to an end user by an admin, the SWA-enabled app integration appears as a new icon on the End-User Dashboard.

Related topics

Create SWA app integrations