REST Security Solution Sheet

Standards-based Security for Web Oriented Architectures

A single solution simplifies the implementation of security for both REST and WS-* Web Services


The Problem
Representational State Transfer (REST) and resource orientation in general provide a lightweight approach to exposing Web
APIs known as RESTful Web services. A key component of Web Oriented Architectures, REST requesters and service
implementations use HTTP to exchange resources formatted using common content types, such as PDF, XML, HTML and
JSON. But while developers appreciate the fact that REST provides them with a quicker and easier way to instantiate Web
services than the more traditional, SOAP-based/WS-* approach, most of them also recognize that REST lacks a well-
articulated security model.

The Layer 7 Solution
RESTful Web services are closely aligned with the Web and, as such, are subject to all the traditional, Web-based threats. Yet,
just as for WS-* services, RESTful Web services can receive payloads and potential message-level threats, such as injections
and parser attacks.

Layer 7s SecureSpan family of XML Gateways can virtualize service endpoints, ensuring that access to RESTful and WS-* Web
services can only occur via the SecureSpan Gateway. Gateway policies act on each incoming message, validating compliance
with application-specific conditions, such as URI patterns, content level patterns (evaluated using XPath expressions), XML
Schema Definitions (XSD), Schematron, JSON schemas, Regular Expressions (RegEx), HTTP header filtering, and more.

The SecureSpan XML Gateways runtime logic also provides integration with IAM infrastructure, enabling authentication of
requesters, as well as centralized management of service access. By delegating authentication and authorization of
requesting entities to SecureSpan, organizations can ensure they are performed in a uniform fashion regardless of the
backend implementing technology. Additionally, SecureSpan XML Gateways can also provide a monitoring layer to validate
Quality of Service (QoS), and enforce service levels in real time.

For RESTful Web services, how can
you:
Authenticate/authorize RESTful
requesters in a uniform manner?

Integrate RESTful Web services with
existing identity and access
management infrastructure?

Monitor and audit access to RESTful
Web services?

Enforce service levels and quotas
for RESTful Web services?
Copyright 2011 Layer 7 Technologies Inc. All rights reserved. SecureSpan and the Layer 7 Technologies design mark are
trademarks of Layer 7 Technologies Inc. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.
Key Features
Identity and Message Level Security
Identity-based access to
services and operations
Integration with leading identity, access, SSO and federation systems from Oracle, Sun,
Microsoft, CA, IBM Tivoli, Novell
Enforce fine-grained entitlement decisions authored in an XACML PDP
Manage security for cross-
domain and B2B
relationships
Credential chaining, credential remapping and support for federated identity
Integrated SAML STS issuer featuring support for SAML 1.1/2.0 authentication,
authorization and attribute based policies and Security Context Tokens
Integrated PKI CA for automated deployment and management of client-side
certificates, and integrated RA for external CAs
STS support for WS-Trust and WS-Federation
Secure REST, WSDL and POX
interfaces
Selectively control access to interfaces down to an operation level
Create on-the-fly composite WSDL views tailored to specific requestors
Out of the box support for popular Cloud & SaaS interfaces from SFDC & Amazon
Service look-up and publications using WSIL and UDDI
Audit transactions Log message-level transaction information
Spool log data to off-board data stores and management systems
Threat Protection
Filter XML content for SOA,
Web 2.0 and Cloud
Configurable validation & filtering of HTTP headers, parameters and form data
Detection of classified or dirty words or arbitrary signatures with subsequent
scrubbing, rejection or redaction of messages
Support for REST, AJAX, XML, SOAP, POX and other XML-based services
Prevent XML attack and
intrusion
Protect against XML parsing; XDoS and OS attacks; SQL and malicious scripting language
injection attacks; external entity attacks
Protection against XML content tampering and viruses in SOAP attachments
DoD STIG vulnerability tested and assured
Transactional Integrity
Protection
Protect against identity spoofing and session hijacking cluster-wide
Assure integrity of communication end-to-end
Traffic Management
Throttling Granular rate limiting and traffic shaping based on number of requests or service
availability across a cluster
Cluster-wide counters Persist message counters across clusters so that rate limiting and traffic shaping can be
strictly enforced in high availability configurations
CoS for XML Prioritize XML traffic based on Class of Service/Quality of Service preferences
Service availability
management
Manage routing to back-end services based on availability or latency performance
Reporting and analysis Configurable, out-of-the-box reports provide insight into SSG operations, service-level
performance, and user experience
Supported Standards
XML, JSON, SOAP, REST, PCI-DSS, AJAX, XPath, XSLT, WSDL, XML Schema, LDAP, SAML, XACML, OAuth, PKCS, X.509
Certificates, FIPS 140, Kerberos, W3C XML Signature, W3C XML Encryption, SSL/TLS, SNMP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP4,
HTTP/HTTPS, JMS, MQ Series, Tibco EMS, FTP, WS-Security, WS-Trust, WS-Federation, WS-SecureExchange, WS-
Addressing, WS-SecureConversation, WS-MetadataExchange, WS-Policy, WS-SecurityPolicy, WS-PolicyAttachment,
WSIL, WS-I, WS-I BSP, UDDI, WSRR, MTOM, IPv6, WCF

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