Patent ID: 8291077

Claim:
A system for providing services to subscribers of a network, wherein the system supports the provision of a plurality of different services to multiple subscribers, and comprises: a first processing unit in a service delivery system of a network operator of the network and which provides a first execution environment for a first set of software applications for providing respective services over the network from service units external to the service delivery system to subscribers; a second processing unit in the service delivery system of the network operator and which provides a second execution environment for a second set of software applications for providing respective services from service units to subscribers; a data structure for storing data associated with a plurality of subscribers, wherein data associated with each of said plurality of subscribers comprises a plurality of sets of data, each set of data for a subscriber relating to a respective different authentication process and to a respective level of authentication; and a trust model comprising a set of relationships between the sets of data, wherein the trust model determines the access rights of subscribers to different services hosted by the different processing units in dependence on the data set which has been used to authenticate the subscriber in a given subscriber session, wherein the trust model defines progressively increasing levels of trust wherein authentication of a subscriber using one of the sets of data at a first level of trust authorizes the subscriber to access services which require the first level of trust or lower to be met during authentication; wherein the first set of software applications are each associated with a first service binding or first set of service bindings, the second set of software applications are each associated with a different second service binding or second set of service bindings, and wherein the system further comprises a second data structure containing data identifying the first and second sets of software applications or software application components of the first and second sets of software applications, and further identifies the service binding or bindings associated with each application or application component.