Performance analysis of security layer on embedded web services

The price and size reduction of computational devices have increased the number of areas where human-operated equipments are replaced by autonomous and autoconfigurable devices. The IP protocol has taken place in industrial and home automation, specially in wireless applications. It allows applications to use interoperable communication strategies commonly used in the computer networks as the Web Services. Since the standard Web Services are too heavy to be directly used in devices, the DPWS (Device Profile for Web Services) has been created, reducing the resources needed by services. The DPWS specification suggest WS-Security to implement secure communication between devices and their clients. It is a problem considering that WS-Security not fit in current devices applications, because it uses assimetric cryptography for all communication steps. This work evaluates the use of DPWS over a TLS/SSL cryptography layer using compression techniques to reduce the impact of security layer implementation.