To enable a trusted connection between the login service and Salesforce, an architect should enforce mutual authentication between systems using SSL. Mutual authentication, also known as two-way SSL or client certificate authentication, is a process in whichboth parties in a communication exchange certificates to verify their identities7. This mechanism ensures that only authorized systems can access each other’s resources and prevents unauthorized access or spoofing attacks8. To use mutual authentication with delegated authentication, you need to do the following steps9:

Generate a self-signed certificate in Salesforce and download it.

Import the certificate into your login service’s truststore.

Configure your login service to require client certificates for incoming requests.

Generate a certificate for your login service and export it.

Import the certificate into Salesforce’s certificate and key management tool.

Enable mutual authentication for your login service’s endpoint URL in Salesforce.