The short answer is that credentials are the method of choice for eBOSS to determine who you are and if you currently have access to the resource you have asked for. The longer answer requires you to know a little more about how most security implementations work.

Most resources you have access to must be secured in some manner; this security ranges from keeping hackers out to preventing unauthorized access by employees. Most effective security systems employee a 'challenge and response' architecture where the user is challenged to prove their identity to which they respond with a verifiable response. The typical login process follows this format

System : "Who are you?"
User : "I am user X."
System : "Prove it with some piece of information only you would know."
User : "My password is 'qwerty1'."
System : "Hello User X."

So long as User X is the only person who knows that their password is 'qwerty1' then this is a very secure setup. However, if User X has to remember multiple passwords though, security strength begins to crack. Studies have shown that as the number of passwords required to be remembered increases, one of three things begin to happen. Either the password quality dramatically decreases, the number of passwords written on yellow sticky notes on the underside of the user's mouse pad increases or your help desk expenditures for forgotten passwords begins to skyrocket. Cross-El Software Solutions, however, offers a fourth option; the eBOSS Enterprise Desktop employing single use credentials

When a user logs in to the eBOSS Enterprise Desktop they follow the typical 'challenge and response' pattern. But upon completion eBOSS issues the user a credential that is unique to that user and which will change when the user presents it to the BOSS Access and Authorization Policy Server. At this point, lets revisit our illustration from above.

System : "Who are you?"
User : "I am user X."
System : "Prove it with some piece of information only you would know."
User : "My password is 'qwerty1'."
System : "Hello User X. If anyone ask who you are, present this credential and I'll vouch for you."

In this environment, eBOSS becomes responsible for validating your identity to all the resources you have access to. eBOSS will also only present applications and resources that you have been granted access to, this enables system administrators to give users the specific access they need without giving more access than what is required. In this enterprise model the user is only required to remember one password, their eBOSS password. Since the number of passwords required is only one, the required password quality can be much greater. While it would be a nightmare to maintain password quality rules and generation support on every application, if those applications were engineered with the eBOSS credential in mind, then all the password rules would then be consolidated in one central location.

Moving the authentication portion of your enterprise application into one central place provides numerous advantages. Not the least of which is the ease of administration. If a user does forget their password the help desk does not have to reset the password in all the applications the user has access to, but only in BOSS. Using the auto reset functionality of eBOSS, the help desk can be eliminated from most password reset functionality, freeing those resources to be better used elsewhere. Taking advantage of the eBOSS Enterprise Link functionality, you can easily reduce the number of native logins on your midrange hardware. If a user needs to run an application as a native user, that can be dynamically launched on the user's behalf based on the credential that is issued to the user.