Patent ID: 8312510

Claim:
An authentication terminal comprising: an authentication server communication unit configured to communicate with an authentication server that performs personal authentication via a network; a terminal communication unit configured to receive a proxy authentication request from a network terminal lacking an interface for reading authentication data for performing personal authentication, and to return a reply to the network terminal; an interface for reading authentication data for performing personal authentication; a proxy authentication execution unit configured to read the authentication data from the interface in response to the proxy authentication request from the network terminal; and an authentication operation prompting unit configured to prompt a user to perform an authentication operation; wherein in response to the proxy authentication request from the network terminal, a display prompting the user to perform the authentication operation is displayed, the authentication data for performing personal authentication are read when the user performs the operation, an authentication request is sent, together with the read authentication data, to the authentication server, an authentication result is received from the authentication server, and the network terminal is notified of the result.