US Patent 9172687 Query system and method to determine authentication capabilities

A system, apparatus, method, and machine readable medium are described for determining the authentication capabilities. For example, one embodiment of a method comprises: receiving a policy identifying a set of acceptable authentication capabilities; determining a set of client authentication capabilities; and filtering the set of acceptable authentication capabilities based on the determined set of client authentication capabilities to arrive at a filtered set of one or more authentication capabilities for authenticating a user of the client.