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Sun Joins WS-Security Effort

Notable holdout Sun Microsystems Inc. is now on the Web Services Security (WS-Security) specification bandwagon.

Microsoft, IBM and VeriSign have been promoting WS-Security since April, when they submitted it to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for ratification as an industry standard.

Now the three WS-Security backers are handing the specification over to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) for ongoing development.

Sun has "expressed plans to participate in the OASIS development effort," Microsoft noted in a news release last week. Other vendors falling under that description include Baltimore Technologies, BEA Systems, Cisco Systems, Documentum, Entrust, Intel, IONA, Netegrity, Novell, Oblix, OpenNetworks, RSA Security, SAP and Systinet. specifications that Microsoft, IBM and VeriSign have been promoting since April.

The WS-Security specification defines a set of SOAP extensions for implementing integrity and confidentiality in Web services. Microsoft, IBM and VeriSign had developed a road map for several other Web Services security specifications built on WS-Security.

About the Author

Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.

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