Duo Single Sign-On for Cisco Secure Email

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 Cisco Secure Email 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 Cisco Secure Email.

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

Configure Single Sign-On

Before configuring Cisco Secure Email 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 Cisco Secure Email application in Duo.

These instructions are not for Cisco Secure Email Gateway. Please see Duo KB article 8125 for guidance protecting Cisco Secure Email Gateway with Duo SSO.

Create the Cisco Email Security Application in Duo

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

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

3. Cisco Secure Email uses the Mail attribute when authenticating. We've mapped the <Email Address> bridge attribute to Duo Single Sign-On supported authentication source attributes as follows:

   Bridge Attribute	Active Directory	SAML IdP
   <Email Address>	mail	Email

   If you are using a non-standard email attribute for your authentication source, check the Custom attributes box and enter the name of the attribute 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

We've already updated the Duo Cisco Email Security application hosted in Duo's service to support the Universal Prompt, so there's no action required on your part to update the application itself. If you created your Cisco Email Security application before March 2024, you can activate the Universal Prompt experience for users from the Duo Admin Panel. Cisco Email Security applications created after March 2024 have the Universal Prompt activated by default.

If you created your Cisco Email Security application before March 2024, it's a good idea to read the Universal Prompt Update Guide for more information, about the update process and the new login experience for users, before you activate the Universal Prompt for your application.

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.

The "Universal Prompt" area of the application details page shows that this application is "Ready to activate", 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" here and on the Universal Prompt Update Progress report.

Should you ever want to roll back to the traditional prompt, you can return to this setting and change it back to Show traditional prompt. However, this will still deliver the Duo prompt via redirect, not in an iframe. Keep in mind that support for the traditional Duo prompt ended for the majority of applications in March 2024.

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 Cisco Secure Email for SSO

1. Log into your Cisco Secure Email account as an administrator.

2. At the top of the page, click the Accounts tab. The "Account Management" page opens.

3. In the "Sign In Settings" section, next to "Websafe Authentication Method", click the SAML 2.0 radio button.

4. Next to "Admin Portal Authentication Method", click the CRES radio button.

5. In the SSO Alternate Email Attribute Name field, type mail.

6. In the SSO Service Provider Entity ID field, enter a unique name for your entity ID.

7. Copy your created entity ID and paste it into the Duo Admin Panel SSO Service Provider Entity ID field, under "Service Provider".

8. In the Duo Admin Panel under "Metadata", copy the SSO Customer Service URL and paste it into the Cisco Secure Email SSO Customer Service URL field.

   

9. Return to the Duo Admin Panel. Under "Downloads", click Download certificate.

10. Return to Cisco Secure Email. At the bottom of the "Sign In Settings" section, click Choose File and open the certificate file your downloaded from Duo earlier.

11. In Cisco Secure Email, copy the SSO Assertion Consumer URL and paste it into the Duo Admin Panel SSO Assertion Consumer URL field, under "Service Provider".

    

12. In the Duo Admin Panel, scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save.

13. Return to Cisco Secure Email. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save.

14. In Cisco Secure Email, click Activate SAML. The "Activate SAML" pop-up window opens.

15. In the "Activate SAML" pop-up window, click Continue be redirected to Duo Single Sign-On to begin authentication.

16. Click Continue again to close the pop-up window.

17. In Cisco Secure Email, click Save again.

Learn more about Cisco Secure Email SSO at Cisco Product Support.

Using SSO

You can log on to Cisco Secure Email by navigating to your Cisco Secure Email SSO page e.g., https://res.cisco.com/websafe/login.action. Enter your email address and click Log In 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 Cisco Secure Email to complete the login process.

* Universal Prompt experience shown.

Cisco Secure Email supports SP-initiated authentication only, meaning that you must start your SSO login from that application's sign-in page. You won't be able to add Cisco Secure Email as an application tile in Duo Central for IdP-initiated logins.

Congratulations! Your Cisco Secure Email 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 Cisco Secure Email 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.