Patent ID: 8631478

Claim:
A computer-implementable method for providing lifecycle management of privilege sharing, comprising: providing a proxy service to a plurality of identity services, each identity service being defined in an identity management system and managing a plurality of privileged accounts; defining a filter to specify the identity services whose privileged accounts will be hosted by the proxy service; assigning a group of the proxy service to a shared ID authorization account, the assigning to the respective account being managed by an identification (ID) pool manager; and sharing the use of the privileged account with the shared ID authorization account; wherein the lifecycle of a shared privileged account is managed by performing: an account access authorization request operation in response to a shared privileged account being received by the proxy service, wherein the access request operation obtains approval of access; an account sign-out operation in response to a shared ID authorization account request being received by the proxy service, wherein the account sign-out operation: generates a shared ID authorization account record comprising the shared usage relationship of the shared ID authorization account and the requestor and account sign-out information; associates the shared ID authorization account with the requestor; generates a new password for use of the shared privileged account by the requestor; and an account sign-in operation upon expiration of the shared ID authorization account or its end of use by the requestor, wherein the account sign-in operation: disassociates the shared privileged account from the requestor; disables the use of the new password with the shared privileged account; updates the shared ID authorization account record with account sign-in information; and an authorization removal operation deleting the shared ID authorization account when access to the system is no longer needed.