Duo Single Sign-On for Splunk Cloud

This application does not support Splunk Enterprise. Try Duo for Splunk Enterprise.

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 Splunk 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 Splunk.

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

Configure Single Sign-On

Before configuring Splunk 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 Splunk application in Duo.

Create the Splunk Application in Duo

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

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

3. Splunk uses the Mail attribute, First name attribute, and Last name attribute when authenticating. We've mapped the bridge attributes to Duo Single Sign-On supported authentication source attributes as follows:

   Bridge Attribute	Active Directory	SAML IdP
   <Email Address>	mail	Email
   <First Name>	givenName	FirstName
   <Last Name>	sn	LastName

   If you are using non-standard attributes for your authentication source, check the Custom attributes box and enter the names of the attributes 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 Splunk application page 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 Splunk 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 Splunk application before March 2024, you can activate the Universal Prompt experience for users from the Duo Admin Panel. Splunk applications created after March 2024 have the Universal Prompt activated by default.

If you created your Splunk 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 Splunk for SSO

1. Log into your Splunk Cloud account and navigate to Settings → Authentication methods.

2. Click SAML → Configure Splunk to use SAML. The "SAML Configuration" window opens.

3. Return to the Duo Splunk application page and click Download XML under "Downloads".

4. Return to the Splunk "SAML Configuration" window and click Select File next to "Metadata XML File". Navigate to the downloaded Splunk IdP metadata file and open the file. The file is now displayed next to the Select File button.

5. Scroll down and make sure your entity ID is in the Entity ID field under "General Settings".

6. Scroll further down and click Attribute Query Requests to expand the menu. Delete the text in the Password field.

7. In the address bar of your web browser, copy the domain name and paste it into the Fully qualified domain name or IDP of the load balancer field.

8. Type 443 into the Redirect port - load balancer port field and click Save.

   

9. At the top right of your Splunk Cloud account page, click SAML Configuration. The "SAML Configuration" window opens again with the saved configuration.

10. Click Download File next to "SP Metadata File". Close the "SAML Configuration" window.

11. Open the SP metadata file in a text editor (like Notepad) and scroll to the bottom of the text editor window. Copy the ACS URL next to "Location" and paste it into the Duo Splunk application page's Assertion Consumer Service URL field.

    

12. Return to the text editor window with the SP metadata file. Copy the entity ID and paste it into the Duo Splunk application page's Entity ID field.

    

13. Return to your Splunk Cloud account page and click New Group at the top right of the page.

14. Enter the desired name into the Group Name field and select the applicable roles in the Splunk Roles field. Click Save.

15. Copy the created group name and paste it into the Duo Splunk application page's Splunk Group Name field in the "Role attributes" section.

16. Select the applicable group(s) to map the created group to in the Duo Groups drop-down menu.

17. Scroll to the bottom of the Duo Splunk application page and click Save.

Learn more about Splunk SSO at Splunk Customer Support.

Using SSO

You can log on to Splunk by navigating to your Splunk SSO page e.g., https://example.splunkcloud.com/. You'll 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 Splunk to complete the login process.

* Universal Prompt experience shown.

Congratulations! Your Splunk 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 Splunk 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.