The AS4 Protocol facilitates a secure B2B Document exchange via Web Services. It is developed and maintained by the OASIS Services Technical subcommittee. The intent is to develop a constrained profile of the ebMS v3.0 specification, very much in the spirit of the well-kown AS2 Protocol. It is commonly considered for AS4 to be the spiritual successor to AS2.
AS4 provides a reliable and advanced way of transferring data. It features strong security, guaranteed confidentiality, and non-repudiation of data transport.
It’s reliability is robust and it has built-in functionality to detect a message’s integrity. To assure this, AS4 provides its evidence by applying the WS-Security signing feature on User Messages. This security is based on asymmetric keys.
Encryption is another strong feature of AS4. It ensures confidentiality of the data being sent through the communication channels. Transport Layer Security (TLS) is used in combination with strong encryption protocols.
As with AS2, Drummond group provides certification services for AS4 implementations. AS4 is rapidly gaining global momentum in quite some industries. It is considered production-ready and used in Japan, Australia and the European Union. ENTSOG with their AS4 profile being one of the forerunners. Many enterprise and business integration software companies have been implemented the Protocol with good results.
Some of them includes:
Axway, a global software and service company from Phoenix, AZ offering various B2B integration solutions to over 11,000 companies around the world.
Seeburger, from Bretten, Germany, being another software company that offers B2B integration to its customers. They supply AS4 software to its partner Westnetz/Thyssengas as shown in the proceedings of ENTSOG’s field test.
Tibco Software Inc., from Palo Alto CA, which provides infrastructure and business intelligence software. In the ENTSOG’s proof-of-concept, Tibco provided AS4 software to ENAGAS (Spain), ENI and SNAM Rete Gas (both Italy).
There is even a free/libre Open Source (FOSS) production-ready product, Holodeck, providing AS4 functionality with its Java-based messaging solution.