With increasing Web-based transactions, the need for secure communications between applications increases. The systems providing these security measures must be scalable, customizable, and able to integrate with various Web programs.

RSA Security Inc. has added to its line-up of identity and access management authentication solutions, by introducing software capable of meeting broader and more complex web security concerns. RSA ClearTrust software, RSA Federated Identity Manager, and RSA Keon software are new additions to RSA's battery of Web security products. RSA BSAFE SWS-J software, which is available for pre-release evaluation, enables other authentication methods, like Kerberos tickets, SAML assertions and its own RSA SecurID authentication tokens, to work interoperatively between web services which may be setup differently.

"Organizations are looking forward to a productive computing environment in which applications launched by a trusted user or system will be able to transact with multiple applications and enterprises across the Internet using web services, thus streamlining business processes for competitive advantage," said Dan Blum, senior vice president and research director at the Burton Group. "RSA Security is active in shaping strong authentication and web services standards and technologies that will be required to ensure the adoption of web services as way to extend identity management infrastructures."

RSA BSAFE? SWS-J takes a standards-based approach in developing compatibility between web services. BSAFE? SWS-J is one of the first commercially available Java solutions to support the OASIS Web Services Security (WSS) 1.0 standard. WSS is the basic, standard-providing security for web services transactions, and it forms the basis of security for emerging standards from OASIS and WS-* specifications.

RSA BSAFE? SWS-J software uses Sun's? Java Cryptographic Extensions (JCE) architecture allowing it to be used by any JCE provider. Keeping in compliance with WS-Security 1.0 specification, the new software includes implementation of XML Encryption and Digital Signing.

"RSA Security is leading the way," said Robert Ford, CTO of CyberSource, a leading provider of electronic payment and risk management solutions based in Mountain View, Calif., "for software developers to secure web services applications and the transactions those web services exchange. Cybersource helps our customers safely make millions of online transactions. We rely heavily on application-to-application transactions to empower our customers and one of the differentiations for our service is that we create an end-to-end trusted environment for our customers. RSA BSAFE SWS-J software will simplify the process of adding standards-based, interoperable security to our web services applications."

This latest offering from RSA, along with the company's other new offerings, forms enterprise-class web security measures that are very scalable, and can be customized to meet individual company services.

RSA recently announced partnerships with DataPower, Forum Systems, Reactivity, Vordel and Westbridge. All of these companies are XML gateway leaders, which coupled with RSA can offer customers fully integrated security solutions able to work between different systems.

"Clearly, a well thought out web services security strategy has identity management at its core, with an eye toward efficient and effective authorization, authentication, audit trail and policy enforcement," said Jason Lewis, vice president of product management and marketing at RSA Security.

Each of RSA's product offerings adds in the ultimate creation of dynamic web security solutions. RSA ClearTrust? software for centralized management of identity and access policy and lifecycle management; RSA? Federated Identity Manager, for distributed management of identity and policy information; RSA BSAFE? software for centralized or federated data privacy policy; and RSA Keon? software for digital certificate issuance and validation.

Tom Ryan, CEO and President of Westbridge Technology, one company that teamed with RSA, said, "Certified integration with RSA Federated Identity Management, RSA Keon software and RSA ClearTrust software will assure end-to-end security, ease of deployment and coordinated policy management for web services. This will allow our joint customers to quickly and cost-effectively deploy services-based architectures, not only within their own domains, but in cross-domain Service Oriented Architectures."