WS-Security (Web Services Security) is a communications protocol providing a means for applying security to Web services. On April 19 2004 the WS-Security 1.0 standard was released by Oasis-Open. On February 17 2006 they released version 1.1. Originally developed by IBM, Microsoft, and VeriSign, the protocol is now officially called WSS and developed via committee in Oasis-Open. WS-Security incorporates security features in the header of a SOAP message, working in the application layer. Thus it ensures end-to-end security.