Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Brendan W Dixon

Richard Bruce Ward

Murli D Satagopan

Jeffrey Bruce Parham

Christopher G Kaler

John Peter Shewchuk

Yordan Ivanov Rouskov

Giovanni Moises Della-Libera

Praerit Garg

Jeffrey F Spelman

Ryan D Johnson

Matthew Hur

Josh Thomas Gray

Michael S Dusche

John Kahren Tevosyan

A system provides single sign-on capabilities for accessing a Web application through a passive client across multiple realms within a federation. A federation refers to different organizations or realms that have employed agreements, standards, and/or cooperative technologies to make user identity and entitlements portable between the organizations. Communications are redirected through a client in one realm to obtain a security token that can allow the resource server in the other realm to authenticate the user for access to the Web application.

Passive client single sign-on for web applications

An improved network architecture employs a super authority having an identity catalog to direct login authentication tasks to appropriate authorities. Authentication tasks may be performed by authorities across namespace boundaries if so directed by the super authority, such that a principal account may be moved without alteration of the account ID. In an embodiment of the invention, the identity catalog comprises a listing associating account IDs with appropriate authenticating authorities.

Moving principals across security boundaries without service interruption

A flexible way of expressing trust policies using, for example, XML. Multiple statement types may be expressed for a single authority type. Statement types may include less than all of the statements made by an authority type. Authority types may be defined using any manner interpretable by the computing system using the trust policy. In addition, trust policies may be updated as trust levels change. Even multiple trust policies may be used with reconciliation between the multiple trust policies being accomplished by using the more restrictive trust policy with respect to an assertion.

Flexible, selectable, and fine-grained network trust policies

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Sammamish, WA, United States of America

Brendan W Dixon