Patent ID: 8850017

Claim:
A method implemented and residing within a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, comprising: intercepting, at a transparent proxy, a request from a client, the request for a resource of an origin server and directed initially by the client to the origin server; obtaining, by the transparent proxy, policy enforcement data that grams the client access to use the transparent proxy based on the policy enforcement data and the policy enforcement data is digitally signed; producing, by the transparent proxy a policy state token based on the policy enforcement data; sending, by the transparent proxy, the policy state token to the client for authentication of the client at the transparent proxy during subsequent interactions, the policy state token maintains a relationship among the client, the transparent proxy, and the origin server and serves as authorization for the client to use the transparent proxy to access the resource of the origin server; managing, by the transparent proxy, communications associated with the policy state token, the transparent proxy acting as an intermediary between the client and the origin server; and managing all interactions between the client and the transparent proxy via existing network protocols and without changes to the client or the transparent proxy and using a second transparent proxy to provide failover for the transparent proxy when the transparent proxy becomes unavailable to continue to manage the interactions.