Systems and methods for group authentication

A network connected authentication system for authenticating a user attempting to connect to at least one of a plurality of third party application servers over a public network, comprising:

• a network connected authentication server system communicatively coupled to a network for access by a plurality of users;
• a database coupled to the network connected authentication server system to store information including at least group identifiers, which uniquely identify a specific subset of the plurality of users, wherein the specific subset includes more than one user, user identifiers, which uniquely identify each of the plurality of users, third party application identifiers, which uniquely identify each of the plurality of third party application servers, and authentication rules;
• wherein the network connected authentication server system has a processor and a non-transitory computer-readable medium containing a sequence of instructions that, when executed by the processor, causes the processor to execute an electronic method for authenticating a first user for at least one of the plurality of third party application servers, said electronic method comprising:
• receiving an authentication request for the first user from the at least one of the plurality of third party application servers, said request including a group identifier and a third party application identifier corresponding to the at least one of the plurality of third party application servers,
• retrieving authentication rules from the database based on the group identifier and the third party application identifier,
• sending authentication request to each of the specific subset of users identified with the group identifier based on the retrieved authentication rules,
• receiving authentication responses from the specific subset of users that the authentication requests were sent to, and
• sending an authentication result based on the received authentication responses to the third party application server requesting authentication for the first user, to determine whether to allow the first user to connect to the third party application server.