WS-Security

Putting credentials in a SOAP header without an ecrypted channel is a waste of time, but if you have an encrypted channel, you might as well use the channel’s authentication support. WS-Security only starts to make sense [much the same as SOAP] when you have intermediaries. [Simon Fell]

But part of the potential of WS-Security is to be able to have an authenticated (and possibly signed) transmission without having to encrypt the entire message.  Important, I think, for both the point-to-point case and with intermediaries.