Embodiments of the invention provide techniques for basing access control decisions at the network layer at least in part on information provided in claims, which may describe attributes of a computer requesting access, one or more resources to which access is requested, the user, the circumstances surrounding the requested access, and/or other information. The information may be evaluated based on one or more access control policies, which may be pre-set or dynamically generated, and used in making a decision whether to grant or deny the computer access to the specified resource(s).