WebSphere Message Brokers
File: ac55630_
Writer: Kate Hostler

Concept topic

This build: July 31, 2007 21:21:06

WS-Security

Web Services Security (WS-Security) describes enhancements to SOAP messaging to provide quality of protection through message integrity, message confidentiality, and single message authentication. WS-Security mechanisms can be used to accommodate a wide variety of security models and encryption technologies.

There are numerous advantages to using WS-Security, such as:

WS-Security provides a general-purpose mechanism for associating security tokens with messages. No specific type of security token is required by WS-Security. It is designed to be extensible, for example, to support multiple security token formats.

WS-Security also describes how to encode binary security tokens and attach them to SOAP messages. Specifically, the WS-Security profile specifications describe how to encode Username Tokens and X.509 Tokens. With WS-Security, the domain of these mechanisms can be extended by carrying authentication information in Web services requests. WS-Security also includes extensibility mechanisms that can be used to further describe the credentials that are included with a message. WS-Security is a building block that can be used in conjunction with other Web service protocols to address a wide variety of application security requirements.

The OASIS Web Services Security Specification provides a set of mechanisms to help developers of Web Services secure SOAP message exchanges. For details of the OASIS Web Services Security Specification, see OASIS Standard for WS-Security Specification.

Related concepts
WS-Security mechanisms
SOAP message encryption
SOAP message signing
Related tasks
Adding authentication tokens to a SOAP message
Specifying encryption or singing for a SOAP message
Signing or encrypting WS-addressing headers
Notices | Trademarks | Downloads | Library | Support | Feedback

Copyright IBM Corporation 1999, 2007Copyright IBM Corporation 1999, 2007. All Rights Reserved.
This build: July 31, 2007 21:21:06

ac55630_ This topic's URL is: