In short, <jsp:useBean> sucks for actually doing anything. The intention of it might have been to actually create the beans in Servlets and do all logic there, and then in JSP pages only retrieve the results.
Or perhaps they really expected the getters to do logic. In which case, shame on them.

Here's my advice: forget useBean. Use EL to retrieve properties, and use custom tags when you actually want to do something.

Ah, custom tags. Now that's some good stuff.



Checking authentication, on the other hand, is IMO a task for a filter. Using a filter here means that you don't have to put the check in every single page you create.