Sending secure data over the network in iPhone

Question

Hi,

I have a query regarding sending secure data over the network in iPhone.

What should be used to secure credit-card, bank acct# etc. information which is sent over wireless network.

Is there any difference in methods if we use a native-app or a web-app?

Are there any direct APIs available for this?

Any tutorial will be really helpful. Thanks in advance.

EDIT :

So where exactly the certificate/encryption is needed? Is following procedure correct?

1]Make connection to “https:” web-service using NSURLConnection

2]The server should implement SSL/TLS Server will respond with a digital certificate (*.p12 file)

3]Client side authorization will be done. (Whether the obtained certificate is trusted or not is checked. If trusted,then we can continue. Otherwise exit gracefully)

4]Now Secure Channel is established. Send the data (Credit card info. etc) to server. Encryption can be done using public/private key pair

Answer 1

Make sure the receiving server-side code implements SSL/TLS, the iphone's NSURLConnection and the alternative open-source ASIHTTPRequest both support secure connections to https websites by default.

Answer 2

I am able to connect to a "http://" SOAP webservice. procedure:

1) Create a SOAP Envelope (With required i/p parameters)
2) Make NSURL Object with required web service addr
3) Initialize 'NSMutableURLRequest' with above url
4) Set parameters for NSMutableURLRequest
5) Initiate 'NSURLConnection' with above request.

After this automatically NSURLConnection methods are called. Now I want to connect to 'Https://' web-service and send sensitive info to it.

So,what extra needs to be done? Do I need to add extra methods or above approach works? (I send parameters as plain text from in http)