Patent ID: 8510816

Claim:
A method for provisioning a security token object to a user for accessing a computing resource through a client computer system, the method comprising: receiving a security token object provisioning request from the client computer system for an external security token object interfacing with the client computer system; transmitting an authentication request to the client computer system in response to receiving the security token object provisioning request; authenticating the user against a user identity based upon a set of identity credentials received from the client computer system as provided by the user, the user identity being stored on a data store associated with the computing resource; initiating the extraction of a unique token identifier from the external security token object without intervention from the user in response to a successful authentication of the user, wherein initiating the extraction of the unique token identifier comprises transmitting instructions to a web browser for initiating a security application running on the client computer system to read the unique token identifier from the external security token object; and associating the unique token identifier received from the client computer system to the user identity in the data store; wherein the user is authenticated for access to the computing resource based at least partially upon a subsequent validation of the external security token object against the unique token identifier retrieved from the data store.