Web security standard launched

Microsoft, IBM and VeriSign have developed a security standard for web services and will release the new specification today.

The WS-Security standard will enable the encryption of information and ensure that data passing between companies remains confidential.

The companies plan to build a further five security specifications over the next year to provide more security for web services.

Web services software provides more efficient ways for companies to build software and easily conduct transactions over the internet.

While most software companies see web services as the next big thing, they have been hampered by a lack of efficient security, and the new initiative is widely seen as move towards fixing this problem.

WS-Security is the fourth web services specification created by IBM and Microsoft and is a development of their jointly created Web Services Interoperability Organisation (WS-I).

The organisation's other specifications include the popular Simple Object Access Protocol (Soap), which enables computing systems to link and conduct transactions, and Universal Description, Discovery and Integration, which lets businesses register in a web directory to advertise web services.

The new standard links two security specifications which Microsoft and IBM had worked on separately with help from VeriSign.

It combines development from all three companies and is used as part of a Soap message which explains to a system how to use XML Signature and XML Encryption.

This enables the system to make sure that the message received was not tampered with.