Patent ID: 8296827

Claim:
A method for enabling a user to protect a password stored in a central repository and maintained by a plurality of recovery authorities and to initiate a backup copy of the user's credentials, the method comprising: retrieving recovery information embedded in the user's credentials; generating a symmetric key and a public key private key pair; encrypting the user's credentials with the public key, wherein the private key is operable to decrypt the user's credentials encrypted with the public key; encrypting said private key with said symmetric key; identifying a plurality of recovery authorities from the recovery information embedded in the user's credentials; retrieving a public key for each of the plurality of recovery authorities; generating a recovery password for each of the plurality of recovery authorities based on at least a portion of a user-defined password for the plurality of recovery authorities; encrypting the symmetric key with each recovery password, wherein the symmetric key encryption includes a quorum requirement of the recovery password generated for each of the plurality of recovery authorities, wherein decrypting the symmetric key includes retrieving the generated recovery passwords from the plurality of recovery authorities; and encrypting each recovery password of the plurality of recovery authorities with each respective recovery authority's public key.