Native use of web service protocols and claims in server authentication

A computer-implemented method of authenticating a client, comprising acts of:

• sending a request for access from a client to a web server;
• receiving a request for claims information from the web server;
• negotiating among multiple local security support providers of a client security subsystem of the client for a suitable security support provider for handling the claims information, the suitable security support provider provides an abstraction of protocols that expose authentication to the client for natively accessing a federated service;
• processing the request for claims information from the client to the federated service utilizing the suitable security service provider of the client security subsystem;
• enabling policy exchange to select compatible claims associated with the claims information for the authentication via an authentication header or unauthorized status code based on a token received from the federated service;
• receiving the claims information from the federated service;
• authenticating the client to the web server based on the claims information to authenticate a legacy client application with the web server;
• and
• utilizing a processor to execute instructions stored in memory to perform the acts of sending, receiving, negotiating, processing, enabling, and authenticating.

A computer-implemented method of authenticating a legacy application, comprising acts of:

• receiving a request for claims information from a web server in response to access by an application of a client to the web server;
• negotiating among multiple local security support providers of a security subsystem of the client for a suitable security support provider for handling the claims information, the suitable security support provider provides an abstraction of protocols that expose authentication to the client for natively accessing a federated service, the suitable security support provider emulates a web services trust protocol and a web services metadata protocol;
• processing the claims information to the federated service;
• enabling policy exchange between the client and the web server via an authentication header or an unauthorized status code based on a token received from the federated service;
• and
• utilizing a processor to execute instructions stored in memory to perform the acts of receiving, negotiating, processing, and enabling.