Patent ID: 8813203

Claim:
A system for facilitating distributed authentication comprising: a client machine, in a first domain that comprises a federated environment, receiving, from a user, a first set of authentication credentials; an intermediate machine in a second domain that comprises the federated environment, authenticating the user responsive to receiving the first set of authentication credentials and generating a second set of authentication credentials, the second set of authentication credentials different from the first set of authentication credentials; a first server in the second domain, authenticating the user responsive to the second set of authentication credentials generated by the intermediate machine; a password management program comprising a single sign-on component and, executing on the first server, retrieving a third set of authentication credentials associated with the user responsive to the authentication of the user by the first server in the federated environment, retrieving a cryptographic key using the second set of authentication credentials, and decrypting the third set of authentication credentials using the cryptographic key; and a second server outside the federated environment, authenticating the user, to grant access to a resource outside the federated environment and stored on a computing device other than the client machine, responsive to receiving, from the password management program, the third set of authentication credentials.