I was trying to use Cisco’s Adaptive Security Device Manager (ASDM) to connect to our ASA in the office.  I was getting an authentication error but I knew my credentials were correct and it was working for another engineer.  The Java console contained the error “java.io.IOException: Authentication failure”.  I found several references to proxy issues related to this error, so I went to the Network Settings section of the Java app in the control panel and manually specified our proxy server (including the local bypass addresses) and it started working.  The proxy setting was set to “use browser settings” but obviously this wasn’t working.