---
title: Introduction to PingFederate
description: PingFederate is an enterprise federation server and identity bridge for user authentication and standards-based single sign-on (SSO) for employee, partner, and customer identities.
component: pingfederate
version: 13.0
page_id: pingfederate:introduction_to_pingfederate:pf_intro_to_pf
canonical_url: https://docs.pingidentity.com/pingfederate/13.0/introduction_to_pingfederate/pf_intro_to_pf.html
revdate: July 5, 2023
---

# Introduction to PingFederate

PingFederate is an enterprise federation server and identity bridge for user authentication and standards-based single sign-on (SSO) *(tooltip: \<div class="paragraph">
\<p>The process of authenticating an identity (signing on) at one website (usually with a user ID and password) and then accessing resources secured by other domains without reauthenticating.\</p>
\</div>)* for employee, partner, and customer identities.

PingFederate enables outbound and inbound solutions for SSO, federated identity management, customer identity and access management, mobile identity security, API security, and social identity integration. Browser-based SSO extends employee, customer, and partner identities across domains without passwords using standard identity protocols, such as SAML, WS-Federation, WS-Trust, OAuth *(tooltip: \<div class="paragraph">
\<p>A standard framework that enables an application (OAuth client) to obtain access tokens from an OAuth authorization server for the purpose of retrieving protected resources on a resource server.\</p>
\</div>)*, OpenID Connect (OIDC) *(tooltip: \<div class="paragraph">
\<p>An authentication protocol built on top of OAuth that authenticates users and enables clients (relying parties) of all types to request and receive information about authenticated sessions and users. OIDC is extensible, allowing clients to use optional features such as encryption of identity data, discovery of OpenID Providers (OAuth authorization servers), and session management.\</p>
\</div>)*, and System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) *(tooltip: \<div class="paragraph">
\<p>An application-level, HTTP-based protocol for provisioning and managing user identity information. SCIM supplies a common schema for representing users and groups and provides a REST API.\</p>
\</div>)*.![A diagram depicting PingFederate's business use cases.](_images/jcj1635286137632.png)