Taking steps to secure Web services

Despite the promise, Web services present network administrators with a thorny problem: as network security becomes an increasing concern, Web services open up networks by letting outside users access databases, applications, and internal users. Traditional security techniques - such as virtual private networks or secure sockets layer (SSL) technology - cannot secure the large number of transactions that Web services can perform in a short time. Meanwhile, basic Web services transactions are unencrypted and unsecured, which creates the potential for disaster. It is thus important for Web services technology to have its own security mechanisms. In fact, industry observers have said the biggest obstacle to wider adoption of Web services has been security concerns. With this in mind, researchers are developing and implementing several Web services security approaches.