Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["Michael D. Thomas" <mdthomas AT mindspring.com>]

http://www.extremetech.com/article/0,3396,s=201&a=25395,00.asp

Spec Secures Web Services Apps

NEW ORLEANS--Microsoft Corp., IBM and VeriSign Inc. have joined forces to
develop and publish a new security specification for Web services that will
form the foundation of its proposed Web services security architecture.
The specification, which the parties say is the first such spec to be
launched, will be known as WS-Security and is designed to help organizations
build secure and broadly interoperable Web services applications.

The spec is designed to enable message-level, SOAP-level security,
specifically encryption, authentication and identity around those messages.
What this will really enable is for Web services to communicate in a trusted
manner, especially in a scenario where you have multiple actors in a Web
service, where it will provide end-to-end security between all of those
parties," Marcie Virdin, a director at VeriSign, told eWEEK in an interview
late Wednesday.

WS-Security is thus defined as a standard set of SOAP (Simple Object Access
Protocol) extensions, or message headers, that can be used to implement
integrity and confidentiality in Web services applications. It also provides
standard mechanisms to exchange secure, signed messages in a Web services
environment. "This provides an important foundation layer for Web services
security that will help developers build more secure and broadly interoperable
Web services," she said.