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Nowadays, the main initiative to integrate biodiversity databases worldwide is leaded by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Its solution is based on the DiGIR (Distributed Generic Information Retrieval), a set of protocols and standards, such as HTTP, XML, and UDDI. As biodiversity data has economic and scientific value, and DiGIR approach doesn't answer questions like "who is using the data" or even "which data is being used", new database providers could feel inhibited in joining GBIF system. This paper proposes a web services based architecture for shared biodiversity databases that provides some security services, as authentication and confidentiality, and considers other functional requirements as access control. The architecture is discussed and an implementation is suggested.