BACKGROUND

The disclosure generally relates to the field of application authentication on computing devices.

An application executing on a device engages in an authentication process where credentials are exchanged between the authenticating entity and the application in order to authorize the application to take certain actions. A problem with a typical authentication process is requiring a user of the device to manually provide the credentials to proceed with the authentication. This is both cumbersome and inefficient for the user and requires the user to maintain credentials for each application executing on the device. A solution to this problem enables a particular application on the device to act as an authentication gatekeeper such that other applications may rely on the gatekeeping application for authentication purposes. This solution, however, requires the user of the device to install and maintain that gatekeeping application on the device. In some scenarios, installing the gatekeeping application is not a desirable solution for the user.

