Patent ID: 8560861

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: an interface that receives a request for web access permissions from a manager of an associate to establish web access permissions for the associate via an unsecure communication link, the unsecure communication link being absent a secure communications protocol; a storage device configured to store manager-associate relationship information; and a processor coupled to the interface and the storage device, the processor configured to receive a relationship ticket obtained by the manager from a client computing device utilized by the manager, wherein the client computing device obtains the relationship ticket from a network authentication server and the relationship ticket is encrypted by the network authentication server so that the relationship ticket cannot be decrypted by the client computing device, the processor further configured to decrypt the relationship ticket, authenticate the relationship ticket and establish the requested web access permissions for the associate when the relationship ticket is authenticated, the relationship ticket comprising: an identity of the manager of the associate; and an identity of the associate.