Patent ID: 7926089

Claim:
A method of managing trust relationships between federated identity and service providers, the method comprising: receiving an assertion of a user identity from an identity provider of a plurality of identity providers, wherein each of the identity providers comprises a separate domain, via a first federation protocol from a first intermediary federation router configured as a consolidated identity provider of said plurality of identity providers, wherein the first intermediary federation router has a single trust relationship with each of said plurality of identity providers, wherein a destination service provider of a plurality of destination service providers is indicated with the assertion, verifying permission of the user identity to access the destination service provider; and asserting the user identity to the destination service provider of said plurality of service providers, wherein each of the service providers comprises a separate domain, via a second federation protocol from a second intermediary federation router configured as a consolidated destination service provider of said plurality of destination service providers, such that said plurality of identity providers has a single trust relationship with said plurality of destination service providers only through said first intermediary federation router and said second intermediary router.