Of all institutions and enterprises you can think of, none is a more likely candidate for secure messaging services than the Department of Defense (DOD), and even its procurement folks need to keep things quiet. It just would not do to have a terrorist organization know the whereabouts of the newest shipment of Abrams Fighting Vehicles or even where the DOD has placed an order for combat-ready laptops.


BEA Systems and ICF Consulting announced today that the companies have completed a contract to provide secure messaging to the DOD's EMALL, its worldwide commerce portal. EMALL is built on BEA WebLogic Integration web services, and the most recent revision includes Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Language (ebXML) code to provide secure and reliable messaging between DOD trading partners.


"It's imperative that DOD EMALL users be able to send and receive order information among heterogeneous systems securely and reliably," said Gabrielle Zimmerman who works at DOD as manager for EMALL.

That's what the ebXML in the new revision allows because it is designed to confirm message receipt in order to ensure non-repudiation while helping to complete transactions faster. It also allows a Web site to securely retry actions that are aborted or fail. ebXML also helps facilitate the use of digital signatures that verify message authenticity. ebXML is protocol-independent so that it can be used regardless of the means by which an interaction is taking place.