System and methods for effecting communications between a trusted management process and one or more managed processes in a distributed computing environment where direct communications between processes via a data communications network is blocked by a firewall or other security system. The method includes a file server that is accessible to all communicating processes. The file server provides a secure mailbox for each managed process. The mailbox is used to hold messages that are stored as individual files. The management and managed processes communicate by writing and reading files in the mailbox of the managed process. The stateless manner of the message-based communications makes it easy to replicate the management process in order to provide scalability and fault-tolerance for the management functions.