  Business requirements for rapid operational efficiency, customer
responsiveness as well as rapid adaptability are actively driving the need for
ever increasing communication and integration apabilities of software assets.
In this context, security, although acknowledged as being a necessity, is often
perceived as a hindrance. Indeed, dynamic environments require flexible and
understandable security that can be customized, adapted and reconfigured
dynamically to face changing requirements. In this paper, the authors propose
SOA based security governance middleware that handles security requirements on
behalf of a resource exposed through it. The middleware aims at providing
different security settings through the use of managed compositions of security
services called profiles. The main added value of this work compared to
existing handlers or centralized approaches lies in its enhanced flexibility
and transparency.
