Patent ID: 6986038

Claim:
In a computing environment having a plurality of secure network connections, a computer program product for securely propagating security credentials using a trusted master registry, the computer program product embodied on one or more computer-readable media and comprising: computer-readable program code means for receiving, by a password synchronization agent (“PSA”) from a user at a client device over a first secure connection between the client device and the PSA on which the PSA has authenticated itself to the client device, a password propagation request providing an identifier of the user and an identifying secret of the user; computer-readable program code means for forwarding, by the PSA to a trusted master registry over a second secure connection therebetween on which the trusted master registry has authenticated itself to the PSA, the received user identifier and identifying secret, wherein the trusted master registry stores identifying secretes for user identifies only as secured, non-recoverable versions thereof; computer-readable program code means for receiving, by the PSA from the trusted master registry over the second connection, a validation result created by the trusted master registry responsive to the forwarding, the validation result being a successful result if it indicates that the trusted master registry had previously stored, for the user identifier, a secured version of the identifying secret; and computer-readable program code means for propagating, if the validation result is the successful result, the received user identifier and identifying secret from the PSA to one or more target registries over third mutually-authenticated secure connections, each of the third connections being between the PSA and a distinct one of the target registries, such that each target registry can store, for the user identifier, a secured version of the identifying secret, wherein the secured version stored by the target registries is not required to be identical to the secured version stored at the trusted master registry.