Patent ID: 8539562

Claim:
A method for performing automated management of credentials, the method comprising: initially communicating with a plurality of components using default authentication credentials as current authentication credentials corresponding to a plurality of internal user accounts, wherein each of the components provides instances of each of the internal user accounts, and each of the instances of the internal user accounts is accessed with a corresponding current authentication credential; changing the current authentication credentials of the corresponding internal user accounts from the default authentication credentials to first authentication credentials; tracking the current authentication credentials of the corresponding internal user accounts in an index; changing the current authentication credentials of the corresponding internal user accounts from the first authentication credentials to new authentication credentials, and updating the current authentication credentials of the corresponding internal user accounts tracked in the index with the new authentication credentials during each of a series of predefined intervals; retrieving the current authentication credentials of the corresponding internal user accounts from the index and using the retrieved current authentication credentials for accessing the corresponding internal user accounts throughout the plurality of components, wherein each of the plurality of components accesses the instances of the internal user accounts corresponding to other components using the current authentication credentials of the index; and updating the current authentication credentials of the plurality of components to the new authentication credentials and tracking the new authentication credentials as the current authentication credentials in the index, wherein the updating occurs during each of a predefined interval of time defined for credential refreshing.