AS4 is a quite recent standard for that message-based transfer of business documents. AS4 is based on both, Web Service technology and ebMS 3.0 – the successor of the “ebXML Messaging Service 2.0” which has been implemented by Ponton already in 2003. Ponton’s over 200 users world-wide use Ponton X/P to transfer up to 100.000s electronic documents daily at a high rate with a message size of up to 500 MB, running in a high-availability environment. At the same time, also small market participants with only a few daily transmissions efficiently use the software thanks to its ease-of-use.

A trend can be recognised in the industry and among public authorities that AS4 is going to be used for secure and reliable exchange of electronic documents. The used security components are based on OASIS standards such as WS Security for encryption, authentication, integrity and non-repudiation of interorganisational documents exchange.

Ponton X/P also allows in the future to easily configure communication protocols and security features for the exchange of business documents. For this purpose, secret keys are generated internally by Ponton X/P and their public keys are certified by Ponton. As data exchange security applies end-to-end between the internal IT environments of the sender and receiver, there is no possibility for third parties to access the document content.