Data integrity and privacy

The privacy and integrity of data when IBM® Business Process Manager processes are invoked is critical to maintaining security.

Data privacy and data integrity are closely related concepts. For a more detailed discussion, refer to the WebSphere® Application Server Network Deployment Information Center.

Privacy

Privacy means that an unauthorized user should not be able to intercept and read data.

Integrity

Integrity means that an unauthorized user should not be able to alter data.

Data integrity and privacy solutions provided in IBM Business Process Manager

IBM Business Process Manager supports two widely-used solutions for data privacy and integrity:

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol: SSL uses a handshake to authenticate the end points and exchange information used to generate the session key that will be used by the end points for encryption and decryption. SSL is a synchronous protocol and is suitable for point-to-point communication. SSL requires that the two end points maintain a connection with each other for the duration of the SSL session.
WS-Security: This standard defines Simple Object Access Control (SOAP) extensions for securing SOAP messages. WS-Security adds support for authentication, integrity, and privacy for a single SOAP message. Unlike SSL, there is no handshake to establish a session key. This makes WS-Security suitable for securing messages in an asynchronous environment, such as SOAP over Java™ Message Service (JMS) or SOAP over Service Integration Bus (SIB). WS-Security deployment descriptors can be set in your applications before deployment. See related information for more details.

In a business integration environment with multiple systems interacting with one another, it is likely that some of the communication will be asynchronous. Therefore, in most instances, WS-Security may be a more suitable solution. For more information about configuring WS-Security in your own applications, see:

Configuring a web services web client to use SSL

You can configure a web services client to invoke a web service using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).

The details of how to configure your web services web client to use SSL are provided in this WebSphere Application Server technote. A more general discussion of securing web services can be found in the WebSphere Application Server topic Securing applications at the transport level for Web services .