Securing Web Services with Visual Basic 6 - xSynthesis.doc

Securing Web Services with Visual Basic 6.0 and MS SOAP Toolkit 2.0 Zoran Zaev This month, Zoran Zaev shows you how to secure your web services by implementing transport level authentication with Visual Basic. Then, he calls the web services from Visual Basic, VBScript/ASP, and PERL. Finally, he implements transport level SSL encryption to the web services used in his examples. By now, you’ve probably heard quite a bit about web services and how to build web services in your favorite environment. If you haven’t, make sure you check some of our past issues for the introductory coverage on web services as well as specific advice on implementing web services in various programming languages and platforms. As you start thinking of actually deploying your web services in production, an essential question comes into your attention: how can I make sure that my web services are secure? Even more so, perhaps you have already deployed your web service and have only glanced over the topic of security. Or, maybe your web service was deployed in an internal environment where you didn’t think much security is necessary. In any of these situations, you will likely want to look into how you can apply enough security for your web service, such that misuse or malicious use is prevented. In this article, I’ll talk a lot about web services security, but let’s first clearly state what I will and will not cover. Security is a complex subject and I will need much more then one article to cover all of the important security aspects as it relates to web services. When you are implementing security to a system or an application, you have to take an integrated approach and examine all of the components in your system, all of your applications, and modules, but also your business policies and processes. Systems or application security itself, consists of distinctive areas of concern, such as authentication, authorization, auditing and logging, integrity and encryption, privacy and encrypti