Design of application layer services for security automation via a web service approach

N-tier application design has become very common in the IT industry. Each individual layer, such as the application and data layer has its own main functionality. This design is very helpful in securing the application from unauthorized access and in protecting it from attacks to the data layer. The data layer is the core of a company's business, as all the important information of the company will be stored in the data layer and normally will be located in a secured off- line server with limited local network access. The application layer acts as the medium to exchange data between the client layer and the data layer over a network. As such, the application layer has been increasingly targeted for intrusion and attacks. This paper will introduce a method to minimize the security risks in the n-tier application design. The method introduced in this paper will mainly focus on how to secure the application layer from various attacks such as Denial of Services (DoS) attack and spoofing attacks. This is achieved through data protection such as random encryption key generation, data encryption etc. and so forth at both the client application and the application layer. 