What is SAML?

The Security Assertion Markup Language is a standard for the secure, standardised exchange of authentication and attribute information; it defines the structure of SAML assertions as well as the protocols and bindings for transporting them, and is widely used in single-sign-on scenarios (SAML 2.0 Web Browser SSO profile).

SAML is the foundation of further security protocols such as WS-Federation, WS-Trust and WS-Security.

Go deeper:

• SAML (Wikipedia) — the SAML assertion and the web-browser SSO profile.