Patent 8656472 was granted and assigned to Microsoft on February, 2014 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Requests for access to Web service resources are evaluated based on the type of request that is received. Requests are not granted unless sufficient proof of authentication is provided to grant that request. An authentication service evaluates one or more factors to determine whether or not to authenticate the client. After being authenticated by the authentication service, proof of authentication is provided to the Web service, which grants access to the Web service resource.