Patent ID: 8819799
Filing Date: 2014-08-26
Classification: G06F,H04L

Abstract:
1. An image forming apparatus that is communicatively coupled to an intranet and a terminal device, wherein the intranet is communicatively coupled to the Internet and a cloud service in a cloud server via a router, comprising: an extended application that causes a user through the terminal device to use the cloud service in the cloud server; an internal authentication information storage unit that stores first user authentication information for internal authentication relating to authentication for the image forming apparatus, wherein the first user authentication information is associated with the user; an internal user authentication unit that performs an internal sign-on process with respect to the image forming apparatus based on the first user authentication information; an external authentication information storage unit that stores second user authentication information for external authentication relating to authentication for the cloud service and a private IP address that is assigned to the terminal device in the intranet as a destination IP address for the user, in association with one another for each of a plurality of URLs for the external authentication; an authentication necessity determination unit that determines, when a response message corresponding to the request being issued to the plurality of URLs includes information indicating that the authentication has not been performed yet, whether a redirection destination URL included in the response message transferred from the cloud server matches at least one of the plurality of URLs for the external authentication stored in the external authentication information storage unit; and a cloud service authentication substitution unit that i) reads from the external authentication information storage unit, if the redirection destination URL matches at least one of the plurality of URLs, the second user authentication information for the external authentication relating to the private IP address into which a pair of a global IP address and a port number are converted by the router in the response message, ii) transmits the second user authentication information for the external authentication to the redirection destination URL, and iii) performs an external sign-on process with respect to the cloud service.