IBM and Microsoft slip beneath the security covers

IBM, Microsoft and Verisign have teamed up to deliver the next level of open standards to accelerate the take-up of web services.

To be called WS-Security, the new standard aims to solve the issue of compatibility over IT security for web services.

Matthew Shilts, senior engineer at Verisign, said: "This will do the same for security as SOAP did for application interoperability. I see this as the next watershed moment in web services."

WS-Security is designed to enable the development of interoperable security applications which can be deployed over the internet. It is entirely open, and is to be submitted to a standards body, although Microsoft, IBM and Verisign haven't decided which one yet.

They are confident of uptake though. Shilts added: "Whenever you get a technology that fills a hole really well, it tends to get adopted quickly. That's what SOAP did, and I have a feeling that's what will happen here as well."

WS-Security provides a framework whereby companies can exchange secure, signed messages in a web-services environment. Up until now companies who wanted to embed security into web services would have had to develop their own system, a complex and often lengthy task.

This also meant different systems could have difficulty working with each other, spoiling the web services vision.

Peter Bell, .Net business strategist for Microsoft said the new standards were essential to the web services vision. "It doesn't matter if all your applications interoperate, if the security from different parties is proprietary, you could be back where you started," he said. "This is about preserving interoperability as web services develop."

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