US Patent 7865959 Method and system for management of access information

A method and system for managing access information for users and other entities in a distributed computing system is disclosed. In one approach, information relating to user access is stored in a centralized directory while user roles are locally defined at a networked node. When the user connects to the system, the system looks up the necessary information about the user in the central directory to authorize the user. Thereafter, the user's privileges are determined by the user's assigned roles.