This document describes the process used to develop the Web services security specifications.
Non-OASIS activities
OASIS activities
In June 2002, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) received a proposed Web services security specification from IBM, Microsoft, and Verisign. The Web Services Security Technical Committee (WSS TC) was organized at OASIS soon after the submission. The technical committee included many companies including IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, Sun Microsystems, and BEA Systems.
In September 2002, WSS TC published its first specification, Web Services Security Core Specification, Working Draft 01. This specification included the contents of both the original Web services security specification and its addendum.
The coverage of the technical committee became larger as the discussion proceeded. Since the Web Services Security Core Specification allows arbitrary types of security tokens, proposals were published as profiles. The profiles described the method for embedding tokens, including Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) tokens and Kerberos tokens imbedded into the Web services security messages. Subsequently, the definitions of the usage for user name tokens and X.509 binary security tokens, which were defined in the original Web Services Security Specification, were divided into the profiles.
The following figure shows the various Web services security-related specifications. As indicated in the figure, the current support level for Web services security: SOAP message security is based on Draft 13 from May 2003. The current support level for Web services security User name token profiles, is based on Draft 2 from February 2003.
Related concepts
Web services security and Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition security
relationship
Web services security model in WebSphere Application Server
Related reference
Web services security support