WS-I creates security standards body

The Web Services Interoperability Organisation (WS-I) yesterday unveiled the formation of a new security working group to focus on ways to develop secure web services.

The formation of the Basic Security Profile Working Group (BSPWG) comes after several months of research and planning conducted by a security task force chaired by Eve Maler, XML standards architect at Sun Microsystems.

In the pipeline since late November 2002, the BSPWG will prioritise key security interoperability issues between different web services implementations.

"Web services security is a key challenge facing both vendors and consumers of web services," said Maler.

"Our goal is to focus specifically on the interoperability issues involving security technologies and to deliver a profile as a way to encourage secure web services."

The newly chartered group will develop an interoperability profile involving transport security, simple object access protocol messaging security and other security considerations implicated by the WS-I Basic Profile.

The Profile references existing specifications used to provide security and sets out clarifications and guidance designed to promote interoperability of those specifications.

The group will also develop a set of usage scenarios and their component Message Exchange Patterns to guide their work. A timeline for the project's deliverables will be determined in the next month.

Daniel Sholler, vice president of analyst Meta Group, said: "Security is a key requirement for the broad adoption and deployment of web services.

"Today's announcement by WS-I represents an important milestone for helping customers build secure, reliable, transacted web services."