Patent ID: 8245051

Claim:
At least one computer-readable device encoded with computer-executable components comprising: an account store of an identity provider, wherein the account store is configured to maintain data associated with accounts, and wherein the data comprises security information associated with users associated with the accounts, and wherein the security information is organized in the form of security claims, and wherein the account store is further configured to provide the security claims in an intermediate format, and wherein the identity provider is configured to incorporate a requested security claim of the security claims into a security token and to provide the security token comprising the requested security claim to a resource provider of a plurality of resource providers in response to a request from the resource provider; a security token service (STS) of the resource provider, wherein the STS is configured to retrieve the security token comprising the requested security claim provided by the identity provider, and wherein the STS includes built-in transformation modules configured to transform the requested security claim from the intermediate format to a format recognized by the resource provider, and wherein the STS further includes extensibility points configured for interfacing with custom claim transformation modules that are not built-in to the STS, and wherein the STS further includes other extensibility points configured for interfacing with other account stores that are not built-in to the STS; and the extensibility points configured for interfacing with the custom claim transformation modules which are each configured to perform at least one custom claim transformation of at least one of the security claims from the intermediate format to at least one of the formats recognized by the plurality of resource providers, wherein each custom claim transformation module is further configured to interact with the STS through at least one of the extensibility points.