8. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having sets of instructions stored thereon which, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to: receive, at a federated broker, a query from an authenticated user; obtain, by the federated broker, a plurality of user credentials associated with the authenticated user, wherein each of the plurality of user credentials is used to access at least one source of a plurality of sources; obtain, by the federated broker, a plurality of security attributes associated with the authenticated user, wherein: the plurality of security attributes are distinct from the plurality of user credentials; and the plurality of user credentials are first used to access the plurality of sources, and then the plurality of security attributes are compared to security attributes of individual documents within the plurality of sources to determine if the authenticated user can access the individual documents; determine, by the federated broker, a required query format for each of the plurality of sources; translate, by the federated broker, the query into a plurality of queries formatted according to the required query format of each of the plurality of sources; propagate, by the federated broker, the plurality of translated queries, the plurality of security attributes, and the plurality of user credentials to each corresponding source to appear to each corresponding source to be the authenticated user; receive, at the federated broker, results of each of the plurality of queries from each source of the plurality of sources; and consolidate, by the federated broker, the results of each of the plurality of queries to be displayed in a uniform manner.
8. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having sets of instructions stored thereon which, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to: receive, at a federated broker, a query from an authenticated user; obtain, by the federated broker, a plurality of user credentials associated with the authenticated user, wherein each of the plurality of user credentials is used to access at least one source of a plurality of sources; obtain, by the federated broker, a plurality of security attributes associated with the authenticated user, wherein: the plurality of security attributes are distinct from the plurality of user credentials; and the plurality of user credentials are first used to access the plurality of sources, and then the plurality of security attributes are compared to security attributes of individual documents within the plurality of sources to determine if the authenticated user can access the individual documents; determine, by the federated broker, a required query format for each of the plurality of sources; translate, by the federated broker, the query into a plurality of queries formatted according to the required query format of each of the plurality of sources; propagate, by the federated broker, the plurality of translated queries, the plurality of security attributes, and the plurality of user credentials to each corresponding source to appear to each corresponding source to be the authenticated user; receive, at the federated broker, results of each of the plurality of queries from each source of the plurality of sources; and consolidate, by the federated broker, the results of each of the plurality of queries to be displayed in a uniform manner. 12. The non-transitory computer-readable medium as in claim 8 , wherein the sets of instructions when further executed by the computer, cause the computer to when the query is received from the authorized user, normalize, by the federated broker, the plurality of user credentials to access each of the plurality of sources.