Introduction to Web services and their security

Web services enable access to data that has previously been locked within corporate networks and accessible only by using custom-built software. Along with the benefits of Web services comes a serious risk of security breaches. This article gives a brief overview of the key technologies in the arena of Web services and the relevant security technologies. It briefly describes Web services building blocks-SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL-providing more details on SOAP. The focus of attention, however, is on the technologies for protecting SOAP messages and communicating security-relevant information with Web services, XML security, WS-Security, and SAML.