Update: see this post on REST Threat Models and Attack surface for more ideas
As a security architect, do not assume that you know all the intermediaries and endpoints your message will traverse. Let's go back to 1670 -- from Quicksilver:
The heat was too much. He was out in the street with Uncle Thomas, bathing in cool air."They are still warm!" he exclaimed.
Uncle Thomas nodded.
"From the Mint?"
"Yes."
"You mean to tell me that the coins being stamped out at the Mint are, the very same night, melted down into bullion on Threadneedle Street?"
Daniel was noticing, now, that the chimney of Apthorp's shop, two doors up the street, was also smoking, and the same was true of diverse other goldsmiths up and down the length of Threadneedle.
Uncle Thomas raised his eyebrows piously.
"Where does it go then?" Daniel demanded.
"Only a Royal Society man would ask," said Sterling Waterhouse, who had slipped out to join them.
"What do you mean by that, brother?" Daniel asked.
Sterling was walking slowly towards him. Instead of stopping, he flung his arms out wide and collided with Daniel, embraced him and kissed him on the cheek. Not a trace of liquor on his breath. "No one knows where it goes--that is not the point. The point is that it goes--it moves--the movement ne'er stops--it is the blood in the veins of Commerce."
"But you must do something with the bullion--"
"We tender it to gentlemen who give us something in return" said Uncle Thomas. "It's like selling fish at Billingsgate--do the fish wives ask where the fish go?"
"It's generally known that silver percolates slowly eastwards, and stops in the Orient, in the vaults of the Great Mogul and the Emperor of China," Sterling said. "Along the way it might change hands hundreds of times. Does that answer your question?"
Transport level security assumes good security on both endpoints in a point to point scenario and everything beyond those endpoints within the transaction span. Message level security lets the message traverse numerous business, organizational, and technical boundaries, with a modicum of security intact.
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