In developing the pension system, security was also a concern. Although the company had been working with Web services prior to this system, it was mainly doing so internally and was not exposing Web services to external partners, he said. Security is a challenge because the insurance company maintains personal information about individuals, such as health information.

As a result, the company cannot let anonymous users inside the firewall; users must be authenticated first. To shore up security, Vital is using the Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2004 as an application-layer inspection firewall, virtual private network (VPN) and Web cache solution. Nergaard said the company plans to use the 2006 version when it becomes available.

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