A method for discovery profile based unified credential processing for disparate security domains can include loading a discovery profile specifying types of manageable resources to be discovered during discovery of manageable resources and authentication protocols for use in accessing each type of the resources. The method also can include discovering the resources across disparate security domains and selecting a discovered one of the resources in a particular one of the security domains for a systems management task. The method further can include transforming an authentication credential not specific to the particular one of the security domains to a mapped authentication credential specific to the particular one of the security domains and authenticating into the particular one of the security domains with the mapped authentication credential utilizing an authentication protocol specified by the profile in order to perform the systems management task on the selected discovered one of the resources.