A security system and method for granting multi-level access to data items in a distributed network. An architecture is provided, comprising: an authentication server that provides access to a web portal using a web services based communication framework; a system for securely establishing security credentials for an end user logging into the authentication server system; an access directory that obtains the security credentials for the end user from the authentication server, generates a set of XML credential data based on a predefined XML schema, and returns the XML credential data to the authentication server; and wherein the authentication server passes the XML credential data to the web portal in order to grant access to the end user for data items accessible via the web portal.