Web services will flounder unless the web is made more secure, a leading security expert has warned.
Ahead of his keynote speech at the World Wide Web conference in Edinburgh this week, Phillip Hallam-Baker, principal scientist at security specialist VeriSign, told IT Week that internet crime is the biggest challenge facing the web community now that criminals are selling stolen credentials, custom-written viruses and other illegal services online.
"I've spent a lot of time on web services and if security is not built into them they'll be dead on arrival," Hallam-Baker warned. "If you don't secure the systems people are already using, corporations won't expose their entire supply chain [by using web services across organisational boundaries] in an environment rife with crime."