The Impact of Standards in Web Services Security

The Internet has provided an avenue for businesses to adopt web services. Web services promises scalability, agility, cost reduction, profitability and availability thereby meeting instant gratification needs of web users'. It refers to modular Internet-based business functions that perform specific business tasks to facilitate business interactions within and beyond the organization. While addressing web services benefits there have been discussions on the importance of its security. The security of web services has deeply influenced its development and is also one of the main reasons why web services have not been adopted widely. Therefore, this study aims to examine the impact of web services standards and how it facilitates web services security. We analyze security models in web based technologies from previous studies such as; in cloud computing and security as a service technologies to develop a framework of web services standards and its impact on web services security. We then discuss the theoretical and practical implications of web services security and directions for future research.