Dependency mediation - this determines what version of a dependency will be used when multiple versions of an artifact are encountered. http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-dependency-mechanism.html

pom.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>cz.zvestov.mvn</groupId>
    <artifactId>transitive-dependencies</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
            <version>3.2.4.RELEASE</version>
         </dependency>
    </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-security-web</artifactId>
            <version>3.1.4.RELEASE</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

</project>