Service Oriented Architecture - Security Matters

A well established Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) offers numerous benefits to organizations. SOA can help accelerate application development, ensure failover, improve developer effectiveness, reduce the risk of downtime, and create future-proof flexibility. With interoperating services that can be reused to create functionality, SOA helps businesses be more efficient. SOA Governance can help companies overcome challenges and follow best practices, allowing them to better manage their infrastructure. More important than SOA Governance, however, is SOA Security, as protecting Service Oriented Architecture is crucial to ensure applications and services run safely and securely.

SOA Faces Security Challenges

For numerous reasons, including exposure of services and loose coupling of components, SOA security is vital. Exposed applications and services become vulnerable to attacks, and the greater the number of integrations and endpoints, the greater the number of potential points of attack. Moreover, with communication between services and consumers, ensuring secure operations over trust boundaries is crucial. Without an SOA security model in place, the entire business ecosystem is at risk.

A research report conducted by Ponemon Institute in conjunction with Lumension, found that concerns about mobile devices, third-party applications, and services within the business ecosystem are on the rise. The study found that 80% of respondents find mobile and other data-bearing devices present a significant risk to an organization’s networks or enterprise systems because they lack security. Third-party application risk has also increased, yet the report shows that controlling access privileges within the organizations that conducted the survey were practically non-existent. As risk increases, SOA security becomes ever more important.

As organizations deal with the proliferation of devices, as well as cloud and SaaS applications and services, they must ensure the security of their SOA architecture in order to allow business processes to run smoothly and safely. Though applications often come equipped with some form of security, those security models are not always sufficient once the application is exposed. Moreover, upon being exposed as a service, applications may completely lose their security models, leaving enterprise environments susceptible to attacks.

SOA Security With MuleSoft

To help businesses protect their service-oriented architecture, MuleSoft offers Anypoint Enterprise Security. As a component of the Anypoint Platform, Enterprise Security works within Mule as an ESB to enable safe and seamless integration across the organization environment. Anypoint Enterprise Security protects SOA architecture, allowing apps, services, and data to remain safe.

MuleSoft’s Enterprise Security helps businesses secure their SOA environment from threats, all the while providing them control. With a team of dedicated experts ensuring Anypoint Platform, along with Mule as an ESB, are one step ahead of security threats, MuleSoft takes care of security concerns in even the most critical use cases so businesses don’t have to.

• Protect Against Security Attacks: Anypoiny Enterprise Security gives businesses the control to restrict access to business systems based on client IP addresses (single or CIDR), shielding their network from replay and man-in-the-middle attacks.
• Access Control: OAuth allows business to protect access to interfaces and APIs. Mule Enterprise Services Bus behaves as an OAuth 2.0 provider, authorizing access only upon receiving a valid OAuth token from clients. Permitting only a single point of access ensures that SOA endpoints and APIs are protected.
• Data Encryption: Organizations can eliminate exposure of sensitive information (SSNs, credit card numbers, etc.) and preserve data integrity with message encryption, digital signatures, and a credential vault. Messages can be encrypted or decrypted in order to maintain message integrity, protecting communication and sensitive data. Moreover, companies can use digital signatures to protect from message tampering, safely allowing signatures to be processed. With a credential vault, organizations can safely encrypt and store sensitive information, only giving access at runtime.

Employing Mule as an ESB and Anypoint Enterprise Security allows businesses to protect their service-oriented architecture. With the growing number of devices, applications, and APIs, businesses need to ensure their SOA structures can function smoothly and safely. Contact us to learn more what Anypoint Platform can do to help connect organizations and how Anypoint Enterprise Security keeps businesses protected.