Patent ID: 7640430

Claim:
A method for an authentication server to authenticate a supplicant, comprising: authenticating an associated user with the supplicant; establishing a protected session with the associated user; generating a device key for the supplicant; generating an encrypted ticket comprising the device key for the supplicant and information representing the supplicant, the encrypted ticket encrypted with a key only known to the authentication server; sending a machine authentication protected access credential comprising the device key and the encrypted ticket to the supplicant responsive to the authenticating an associated user with the supplicant; receiving an encrypted ticket during a subsequent authentication request; extracting a device key from the encrypted ticket received during the subsequent authentication request using the key only known to the authentication server; verifying the supplicant possesses the device key extracted from the encrypted ticket; and granting limited access to the network responsive to verifying the supplicant possesses the device key extracted from the encrypted ticket.