Web services discovery in secure collaboration environments

Multidomain application environments where distributed domains interoperate with each other is a reality in Web-services-based infrastructures. Collaboration enables domains to effectively share resources; however, it introduces several security and privacy challenges. In this article, we use the current web service standards such as SOAP and UDDI to enable secure interoperability in a service-oriented mediator-free environment. We propose a multihop SOAP messaging protocol that enables domains to discover secure access paths to access roles in different domains. Then we propose a path authentication mechanism based on the encapsulation of SOAP messages and the SOAP-DISG standard. Furthermore, we provide a service discovery protocol that enables domains to discover service descriptions stored in private UDDI registries. © 2007 ACM.