Ross, I don't know in which environment you are working, but JBoss AS 4.2.0 now contains features to do automatic web authentication: http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBAS-4077 http://wiki.jboss.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=WebAuthentication The appropriate forum for getting more information on this topic would be the 'Security & JAAS/JBoss' forum, where a search for 'j_security_check' reveals threads such as http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=73646 Hope this applies to your environment and that it helps to get you started View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4081225#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...