It is important that a form of authentication be used that is not easily spoofed, such as cryptographically signed certificates. Data exported by web clients or servers may need to be protected from eavesdropping. This requirement will be amplified when other kinds of data, such as employee records, government files, etc., begin traversing the web. The electronic commerce example is a case where data integrity is critical to proper functioning of the system. There are a number of possible solutions to the security issues described above.
Research is underway.
One popular proxy developed by the CERN runs on a firewall system and relays requests between both sides of a firewall. Given this design where the proxy acts as an intermediary, it is natural to design security-relevant mediation within the proxy. Proxy mediation that helps mitigate some of the security concerns are - Implementing access control for network services in the proxy that replace the firewall protection that is lost when the proxy is installed. This access control would restore the security policy enforced by the firewall. A site's security policy may prohibit the use of some of HTTP's methods.