IBM announces Secure Web Services Technology

IBM Corp is delivering new security features and functions in its Web services toolkit - (WSTK) 3.1 - to help e-business application developers build secure Web services. The recently introduced WSTK 3.1 consolidates Web services-related technologies from various IBM development and research labs, and provides an implementation based on non-proprietary interfaces that supports a variety of platforms.

Other tools and technologies now available in WSTK 3.1 include: Business Explorer for Web Services, an XML-based UDDI exploration engine that provides standard interfaces to perform complex searches in multiple UDDI directories using a single query request; Web Services Description Language Explorer, a browser-based tool that generates an automatic user interface to assist developers to examine and understand a WSDL document; and Web Services Management, a Web services management technology that employs a Java Management Extensions (JMX)-based systems management interface (JMX is the Java standard for Management APIs).

The new security additions to WSTK offer an implementation of SOAP Security Token and Digital Signature components of the WS-Security specification - WS-Security is a new specification, co-developed by IBM that aims to help companies build secure, interoperable Web services applications.

The SOAP Security Token works by indicating the message sender's properties (such as name, identity, credentials, capabilities) and passes this information with SOAP messages to identify the message sender to the Web service provider.

IBM's modular approach to Web services security is useful to Web service providers when they need to support users with different authentication mechanisms. It also enables Web services providers to incorporate additional security features to their Web services applications over time.

The new security software is freely downloadable for trial on alphaWorks,
the destination for IBM emerging technology.

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