Patent ID: 7953979

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for communicating over a federated network, the method comprising: receiving, by an identity-providing computing device associated with an identity provider, an indication of a request by a requester for access to a resource of a service provider associated with a service-provider computing device; transmitting, by the identity-providing computing device, a digital public key to a trusted third-party computing device associated with a trusted third party of the identity provider and the service provider; receiving, by the identity-providing computing device, a digital certificate from the trusted third-party computing device, the digital certificate indicating that the trusted third party has audited and approved policies of the identity provider for compliance with policies of the trusted third party for communicating on the federated network, wherein the digital certificate contains a digital private key associated with the provided digital public key; responsive to a determination that a trust relationship exists, specifying, by the identity-providing computing device, an identity-assertion data structure defined by the third party policy, the identity-assertion data structure comprising at least one attribute associated with the requester; associating, by the identity-providing computing device, the identity-assertion data structure with the request; digitally signing, by the identity-providing computing device, the identity-assertion data structure using the associated digital private key contained in the received digital certificate; and transmitting, by the identity-providing computing device, the digitally-signed identity-assertion data structure to the service-provider computing device.