Authentication has always been a cat-and-mouse game. Attackers get smarter, defences get stronger, attackers adapt, and the cycle continues. But something has fundamentally changed in the last two years.
Artificial intelligence has entered the identity layer — and it's changing what "secure login" actually means.
What Is SSO (and Why It Matters)?
Single Sign-On (SSO) is an authentication scheme that allows a user to log in once and gain access to multiple applications without logging in again for each one. You've used it if you've ever clicked "Sign in with Google" and been taken straight to your dashboard.
For businesses, SSO solves a real problem: the average employee uses 9.4 applications per workday (Okta, 2024). Without SSO, that's 9.4 sets of credentials to remember — and 9.4 attack surfaces for credential stuffing, phishing, and brute force.
SSO consolidates that into a single, hardened authentication point. But traditional SSO is static. It either lets you in or it doesn't.
AI-powered SSO is different.
What AI Adds to Authentication
Traditional SSO asks: Is your credential correct?
AI-powered SSO asks: Is this login behaviour consistent with who this person actually is?
This is called risk-based or adaptive authentication, and it works by building a continuous behavioural model of each user based on:
- Typical login times — Do you always log in at 9am from Manchester? A 3am login from Bucharest is anomalous.
- Device fingerprinting — What browser, OS, screen resolution, and hardware profile does this person usually use?
- Geographic patterns — Where has this person logged in from historically? How far is today's location from their last session?
- Typing rhythm — Yes, seriously. Keystroke dynamics (how fast you type, pauses between characters) are measurable biometric signals.
- Network characteristics — Is this a known corporate IP range, a residential broadband connection, or a Tor exit node?
The AI model scores every login attempt against these factors in real time and assigns a risk score. Low risk → immediate access. Elevated risk → step-up authentication (push notification, TOTP code). High risk → blocked, flagged, admin alerted.
The Microsoft Entra / Azure AD Example
Microsoft's Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) is the clearest large-scale example of AI-driven authentication in production. Its Conditional Access policies can:
- Require MFA only when risk is detected (not on every login — removing friction for legitimate users)
- Block access from countries your business doesn't operate in
- Detect impossible travel (logged in from London at 9am, login attempt from Sydney at 9:15am — physically impossible)
- Integrate with Microsoft Defender's threat intelligence feeds
The system processes 30 billion authentication events per day and uses machine learning to flag anomalies across that entire dataset. When a new attack pattern emerges — say, a particular phishing kit targeting Microsoft accounts — the model can identify and block it within hours, before traditional signature-based systems would even have a rule written.
Power Platform SSO: Enterprise AI Without the Enterprise Budget
One of the most interesting developments for smaller businesses is the democratisation of enterprise-grade SSO through platforms like Microsoft Power Platform.
Power Apps and Power Automate both support native Entra ID SSO integration. This means:
- A custom internal tool built in Power Apps inherits your organisation's SSO and MFA policies automatically
- No separate user management — your Active Directory users are your app users
- Role-based access control flows from Entra ID groups into the app without any additional code
For a small business that's already in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, this is significant. You get AI-powered, risk-scored authentication on your custom business apps with zero additional infrastructure.
Implementing SSO: What to Expect
If you're building a web application and considering SSO, the implementation path typically looks like this:
For Microsoft ecosystems
Use the Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL) with OAuth 2.0 / OpenID Connect. Entra ID handles the identity provider side; your app just consumes tokens.
For Google Workspace
**Google Identity Services** provides the same flow — your app redirects to Google, Google authenticates, returns a signed JWT your app validates.For multi-provider SSO
Platforms like Auth0, Okta, or Keycloak (open-source) sit in front of multiple providers and give your app a single consistent interface regardless of whether users authenticate via Google, Microsoft, or SAML-based enterprise IdPs.
The Security Case Is Overwhelming
The numbers from credential-based attacks speak for themselves:
- 80% of breaches involve compromised credentials (Verizon DBIR 2024)
- Password reuse affects 65% of users across personal and work accounts
- AI-powered credential stuffing tools can attempt thousands of logins per second
Static username/password login — even with basic MFA — is no longer sufficient for anything sensitive. AI-driven adaptive authentication raises the bar to a level that makes automated attacks economically unviable.
The Friction Paradox
Here's the counterintuitive truth about AI SSO: it makes security feel easier for legitimate users.
Because the AI knows your normal patterns, it only challenges you when something is actually suspicious. Your Monday morning login from your home office laptop? Immediate access. A login attempt from a VPN in a country you've never visited? Challenge.
Traditional blanket MFA annoys legitimate users constantly. AI authentication annoys attackers constantly and legitimate users almost never.
That's the future of identity. And it's available today.
Building an application that needs robust, modern authentication? Talk to us — authentication architecture is something we think about deeply.