Patent ID: 8683205

Claim:
A method comprises: determining whether a data access request is requesting access to a data segment of data stored in a plurality of dispersed storage networks (DSNs), wherein the data segment is dispersed storage error encoded to produce a set of encoded data slices and the set of encoded data slices are stored in storage units of the plurality of DSNs; in response to the data access request to the data segment stored in the plurality of DSNs, determining whether one of the plurality of DSNs is a home DSN of a requesting entity; in response to determining the plurality of DSNs includes the home DSN: utilizing a local signed certificate to access one or more storage units of the home DSN to access one or more encoded data slices of the set of encoded data slices; validating a global signed certificate with one or more DS units of a non-home DSN of the plurality of DSNs to produce a valid global signed certificate; and utilizing the valid global signed certificate to access the one or more DS units of the non-home DSN to access another one or more encoded data slices of the set of encoded data slices; and, in response to determining the DSN is the non-home DSN: validating a global signed certificate with storage units of the non-home DSN to produce the valid global signed certificate; and utilizing the valid global signed certificate to access the set of DS units of the non-home DSN regarding at least some encoded data slices of the set of encoded data slices.