A. Pashalidis, C. Mitchell, "A Taxonomy of Single Sign-On Systems", in 8th Australasian Conference on Information Security and Privacy (ACISP 2003), LNCS 2727, pp. 249-264, Springer-Verlag, 2003.

Abstract: 
At present, network users have to manage one set of authentication
credentials (usually a username/password pair) for every service with which
they are registered. Single Sign-On (SSO) has been proposed as a solution to
the usability, security and management implications of this situation. Under
SSO, users authenticate themselves only once and are logged into the
services they subsequently use without further manual interaction. Several
architectures for SSO have been developed, each with different properties
and underlying infrastructures. This paper presents a taxonomy of these
approaches and puts some of the SSO schemes, services and products into that
context. This enables decisions about the design and selection of future
approaches to SSO to be made within a more structured context; it also
reveals some important differences in the security properties that can be
provided by various approaches.
 

@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/acisp/PashalidisM03,
  author    = {Andreas Pashalidis and
               Chris J. Mitchell},
  title     = {A Taxonomy of Single Sign-On Systems.},
  booktitle = {ACISP},
  year      = {2003},
  pages     = {249-264},
  ee        = {http://springerlink.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article{\&}issn=0302-9743{\&}volume=2727{\&}spage=249},
  crossref  = {DBLP:conf/acisp/2003},
  bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de}
}

@proceedings{DBLP:conf/acisp/2003,
  editor    = {Reihaneh Safavi-Naini and
               Jennifer Seberry},
  title     = {Information Security and Privacy, 8th Australasian Conference,
               ACISP 2003, Wollongong, Australia, July 9-11, 2003, Proceedings},
  booktitle = {ACISP},
  publisher = {Springer},
  series    = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
  volume    = {2727},
  year      = {2003},
  isbn      = {3-540-40515-1},
  bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de}
}