Patent ID: 8281378

Claim:
A system for facilitating distributed authentication to authorize access by a client to a resource stored outside of the client comprising: a federated identity server, in a second domain that comprises a federated environment, receiving a first set of authentication credentials entered by a user via a client machine in a first domain and authenticating the user to the federated environment responsive to receiving the first set of authentication credentials; a server in the second domain that comprises the federated environment authenticating the user responsive to a second set of authentication credentials identified by the federated identity server; a password management program comprising a single sign-on component and executing on the server, retrieving a third set of authentication credentials associated with the user responsive to the authentication of the user by the server in the federated environment; a second server outside the federated environment and receiving, from the password management program, the third set of authentication credentials to complete, for the user in the federated environment, an authentication process to a resource outside the federated environment and a computer program, executing on the second server, granting the client machine access to at least one non-federated resource stored on a computing device other than the client machine in response to successful authentication of the third set of authentication credentials wherein the client machine accesses the at least one non-federated resource through a network connection using a launch ticket supplied by the second server in response to the third set of authentication credentials.