Patent ID: 8234499

Claim:
A method to authenticate users of a computing system comprising: monitoring a number of attempts of access to at least one secured computing asset; receiving, for at least a portion of the attempts, incorrect authentication information for accessing the at least one secured computing asset; determining a similarity score for each attempt, wherein for the portion of attempts the determining of the similarly score compares the incorrect authentication information and previously stored correct authentication information; computing an average authorization score based on the similarity scores for each attempt, and the number of attempts; comparing the average authorization score with an established threshold; responsive to the average authorization score being greater than the established threshold, assigning an access level based on the average authorization score, wherein said assigned access level is an emulation access level or a limited access to a portion of at least one secured computing asset; and granting access consistent with the assigned access level, wherein said receiving, determining, comparing, assigning, and granting are performed automatically by at least one machine in accordance with at least one computer program having a plurality of code sections that are executable by the at least one machine, said at least one computer program being stored in a non-transitory machine readable medium.