Patent ID: 8112789

Claim:
A method for facilitating distributed authentication, the method comprising the steps of: (a) requesting, by a user of a client machine residing in a first domain, access to a resource residing in a second domain; (b) authenticating, by the client machine, the user to an intermediate machine; (c) impersonating, by the intermediate machine, the client machine using a received assertion associated with the user of the client machine from a third party component; (d) requesting, by the intermediate machine impersonating the client machine, access to the second domain from a domain controller residing in the second domain; (e) authorizing, by the domain controller, the requested access to the second domain, responsive to a determination that the impersonated client machine is trusted for delegation; (f) transmitting, by the domain controller, to an application server residing in the second domain, authentication data associated with the impersonated client machine; (g) transmitting, by the application server, to the intermediate machine, a launch ticket uniquely identifying a logon token; and (h) providing, by the client machine to the application server, the launch ticket to access the resource residing in the second domain.