Patent ID: 8806481

Claim:
A computer system comprising: a plurality of hardware components; and a processor executing a computing environment comprising: a virtualization layer implementing a plurality of virtual machines (VMs) within the computer system, wherein the virtualization layer controls the sharing of one or more of the plurality of hardware components by the plurality of VMs; and an authentication service running in a first virtual machine of the plurality of VMs, the authentication service using the one or more of the plurality of hardware components to perform a user authentication process; wherein the authentication service performs the user authentication process and returns a result of the user authentication process to a second virtual machine of the plurality of VMs, in response to a remote procedure call from the second virtual machine and upon determining that an authentication of a user of the computer system is required; the virtualization layer operates to dynamically provide the first virtual machine with exclusive access to the one or more of the plurality of the hardware components when the authentication service performs the user authentication process by accessing each of the one or more hardware components; and the virtualization layer further operates to release the one or more hardware components for use by other VMs executing within the computing environment upon the completion of the user authentication process.