Group steps up Web services security efforts

, a group working on standards for Web services, formed a new committee to develop the WS-Security specification. WS-Security, version 1.0 of which was written by IBM, Microsoft and VeriSign, consists of extensions to the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) designed to make Web services applications confidential and secure. The specification is one of many Web services security specs under development, including several at OASIS. Still other Web services security efforts are ongoing elsewhere.

The OASIS technical committee--which includes representatives of BEA Systems, Commerce One, Fujitsu, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, SAP, Sun Microsystems and VeriSign--will have its first meeting Sept. 4 to Sept. 5 in the San Francisco Bay Area.