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Follow UsSiobhan Kennedy
NEW YORK: Three fierce technology rivals, IBM, Microsoft Corp. and VeriSign
Inc. on, Thursday said they plan to work together to develop a common method for
securing the next generation of Internet business services.
International Business Machines Corp., Microsoft and computer security and
Web address provider Verisign are seeking to win backing from the rest of the
industry for a new security standard, called WS-Security, for encoding and
encrypting so called "Web services."
Web services is the latest industry buzzword for a new way of linking
different computer systems together more easily. The aim is to enable companies
to use Web services to carry out business tasks, such as purchasing and
inventory checking, over the Internet.
The Web services movement is being heavily backed by all the big name
technology companies, including International Business Machines Corp.,
Microsoft, BEA Systems Inc., and SAP AG, among dozens of others. While IBM and
its partners are encouraging businesses to make the shift to Web services, so
far companies have been reluctant because there's been no way of guaranteeing
the security of sensitive business data.
"People see a lot of value to Web services, but they're somewhat
uncomfortable using them ... unless they can be assured that appropriate privacy
is in place," said Bob Sutor, director of IBM's e-business standards
strategy. Sutor said the first part of the security standard, which encrypts the
data, would be released on Thursday.
The group eventually intends to submit it to an Internet standards
organization, such as the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, to be ratified as
an industry standard for use by all companies, he said. In addition, IBM and
Microsoft are separately working on a range of other security features, to be
layered on top of WS-Security, that will be delivered over the next 12 to 18
months, Steven Van Roekel, director of Web services for Microsoft's .Net
platform strategy group said.
"This is all about getting different systems in a heterogenous world to
talk to each other in a very secure way," he said. Enabling everyday
business and consumer tasks to be delivered as Web services over the Internet is
at the heart of Microsoft's .NET Internet strategy.
This isn't the first time IBM and Microsoft have come together in the name of
Web Services. In February, the two companies, plus a host of other software
vendors, formed the Web Services Interoperability alliance, in a bid to hammer
out a standard way to create and deliver Web services.
One noticeable absentee from the group, however, was Sun Microsystems Inc.
whose Java programming language offers customers a rival way to develop Web
services from .NET.