Web services, ID management dominate RSA show

Federated identity and Web services security will dominate the agenda at the annual RSA Conference that kicks off inSan Franciscothis week.

RSA, VeriSign, and the Liberty Alliance Project will use the event to launch products that address security-related issues that hinder Web services adoption.

Set to make a splash at the RSA Conference, the Liberty Alliance is expected to unveil the second phase of its federated identity collaboration called Identity Web Services Framework (ID-WSF).

The framework will map out how the Alliance will develop ID services for PC and low-capability client devices such as mobile phones and PDAs that do not require a server connection, said Simon Pugh, vice president of standards and infrastructure at MasterCard and a member of the Liberty Alliance's Project's management board.

ID-WSF will also push the concept of permissions based sharing.

"Our goal is not that [the information] gets collected together in one site, but I as a consumer need to control how that information is used --  expressed permission from principle, what to do, whether to approve the request," said Pugh.

In the future,Libertywill create ID Discovery Services and Definition of Services Profiles, some of which could be offered outside of theAlliance, he added.

The news reflects the need for automated and interoperable security products to navigate through critical areas such as XML signature and XML decryption/encryption practices, said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at Boston-based ZapThink.

"An important central theme [at the RSA Conference] is that WS-Security is reaching its tipping point and becoming broadly implemented in a variety of products," he said.

To that end, RSA will unveil its RSA Bsafe Secure-WS SDK (software developer kit) to enable the creation of standards-based interoperable security for Web services.  In conjunction, RSA will announce its new Identity and Access Management Strategy bolstered behind its new integrated product system architecture.

Currently in the hands of OASIS and authored by IBM, Microsoft, and VeriSign, WS-Security provides a foundation for secure Web services featuring road map concepts such as policy and trust. WS-Security defines a set of SOAP message headers used for protecting Web services applications.