Technology Sectors
Harmonizing standards within the security industry
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Steve Van Till |
Traditionally, the Security Industry Association has been a standards developing body, but we recognize that we are not alone in this effort and many other organizations are doing good work on their own standards.
However, the only thing worse than having no standards at all is have three standards for the same thing! To that end, SIA has produced a White Paper that describes an approach to harmonizing technical and operational standards among cooperating standards organizations, consortia and forums within the electronic physical security industry.
For example, SIA believes that there are many more security-related interfaces in the overall enterprise than either ONVIF or PSIA are addressing (and more than SIA has historically addressed). We believe it would be useful to the industry as a whole for each standards organization to focus on distinct interfaces so that our efforts do not overlap any more than is necessary.
Consider video as an example. ONVIF has obviously created a significant body of standards for the relationship between video sources and video consumers. PSIA is also completing work in this area. Therefore, SIA does not regard this interface as one that would be productive for us to address.
There are, however, many other component and enterprise-level interfaces that neither PSIA nor ONVIF are addressing. Examples include: system-level interfaces between physical access control systems (PACS) and video management systems (VMS), component-level interfaces between readers and PACS, and enterprise-level identity management interfaces between multiple security systems.
We would propose that standards organizations agree -- to the extent practical -- that going forward, new standards should be complementary to one another (i.e., non-overlapping), and address distinct interfaces within the overall security architecture (as we know it today or expect it to evolve).
It is clear that this type of coordination among complementary specifications will not be possible unless the organizations share a common reference architecture (the way different families of action link together), so that all of the interfaces can be catalogued and named.
Developing this common reference architecture is one of the first areas that SIA proposes for harmonization across the organizations, with specific interactions occurring between their respective committees to accomplish this goal. It is our hope that these organizations will develop reference architecture subcommittees within each organization that are devoted to the task of establishing shared reference architecture.
Many of the same data elements will also be shared across multiple interfaces within the overall reference architecture. Harmonizing these data elements (i.e., having the same definitions, data types, etc.) would be beneficial to the industry as a whole. This is another area subcommittees should address along with complementary or harmonized use case descriptions that clearly describe which standards are designed to enable which class(es) of interoperability.
This joint effort we propose will not only help the industry as a whole, it will also help with regulatory considerations such as the Federal Identity, Credential and Access Management (FICAM) Roadmap and Implementation Guidance (November 10, 2009). The physical security application requirements established in this publication are driving the next generation of physical access control systems and how they interact with the rest of the enterprise.
The SIA Standards Committee looks forward to working with its counterparts in the electronic physical security industry to achieve the interoperability goals that best serve our mutual customers and promote growth for all.
For more information on the Harmonization White Paper, please visit www.siaonline.org/standards
Steve Van Till is chairman of the Security Industry Association standards committee. He can be reached at:
