Ping Federate

What it is:

Ping Federate is an enterprise-grade federation server developed by Ping Identity, used to enable single sign-on (SSO), identity federation, and token translation across identity domains. It supports modern identity protocols such as SAML 2.0, OAuth 2.0, and OpenID Connect, and serves as a bridge between internal identity systems and external service providers or partners. Ping Federate plays a critical role in both workforce and customer IAM environments where secure identity sharing is required across different systems or organizations.

Why it matters:

Federation is essential in environments where users need seamless access across multiple applications—especially across cloud, on-prem, and partner ecosystems. Ping Federate helps:

• Eliminate redundant credentials and reduce password fatigue via SSO

• Improve security by centralizing authentication flows and enforcing policy

• Enable B2B or B2C integrations by supporting multiple federation protocolsIt’s widely adopted in regulated industries due to its extensibility, stability, and support for hybrid identity architectures.
  

How it works:

Ping Federate can be deployed as a standalone server or integrated within larger IAM stacks (e.g., with PingDirectory, PingAccess, or PingOne). It acts as an identity provider (IdP) or service provider (SP) depending on the use case. Organizations typically:

•            Configure it to issue or consume SAML assertions or OIDC tokens

•            Use token mapping and attribute transformation policies to integrate with different user stores

•            Extend it using custom plugins, ID adapters, or authentication selectorsPing Federate can be containerized and deployed using Infrastructure-as-Code (e.g., via Helm or Terraform) for rapid integration into DevSecOps pipelines.