Patent ID: 8621587

Claim:
A method for facilitating distributed authentication, the method comprising the steps of: (a) impersonating, by an intermediate machine, a client machine residing in a first domain using a received assertion from a third party component; (b) receiving, by a domain controller residing in a second domain, an access request from the intermediate machine impersonating the client machine; (c) 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; (d) transmitting, by the domain controller, to an application server residing in the second domain, authentication data associated with the intermediate machine; (e) transmitting, by the application server, to the intermediate machine, a launch ticket uniquely identifying a logon token; and (f) receiving, by the application server from the client machine, the launch ticket to access the resource residing in the second domain.