The State of IT Security: A Selection of Vignettes

by Tom Welsh

Before Web services can become ubiquitous, especially outside the firewall, we need to have a comprehensive security framework. Security is best built in at the design phase of a project, but little or no attention was given to this requirement when SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI were being crafted. Today, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and many others are collaborating to define a retrospective security framework based on the WS-Security specification, while several vendors have launched specialized application firewalls and other tools dedicated to improving Web services security.