Security Sales & Integration

November 2012

SSI serves security installing contractors providing systems and services; surveillance, access control, biometrics, fire alarm and home control/automation. Coverage in commercial and residential product applications, designs, techniques, operations.

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Industry Pulse HOT SEAT CHAMPIONING STANDARDS STEVE VAN TILL President and CEO Brivo Systems month or two that says what we're doing and why we're doing it, and what subject matter we cover as well as what subject matter we don't. Improving the stan- dardization and use of cloud technolo- gies in security is really one of the other things I'm interested in. Brivo Systems President and CEO Steve Van Till is on the frontlines as a leading advocate for standards in the electronic security industry. His efforts include serving as chair of the Security Industry Association (SIA) Standards Committee. He joins the conversation to expound on the topic. What are your top priorities as chair of the SIA Standards Committee? T e organization hadn't really published any new standards in quite a while, so my fi rst goal was to get back into the business of publishing standards. We just completed the fi rst totally new one during my tenure. It came out of the Access and Identity subcommittee, and it's the new protocol [Open Supervised Device Protocol; OSDP 2.1.5] for com- municating between control panels and readers. T at was about a year in the making. I was very happy to see that. We also just formed a new subcom- mittee on use of the cloud and security. We're defi ning the charter of that group right now. We have a draft of a white paper that's going to be published in a Are there instances where standards eff orts overlap? We want to avoid duplicating eff orts of other organizations. For example, ON- VIF has been very successful at defi ning standards between cameras and NVRs or other video systems. T ere's no reason for us to go in and try to compete in that area. T ere's no use for having two stan- dards for that in the security industry. It fragments things. We're working toward being comple- mentary to some of the other standards organizations and we have a vision of harmonizing standards across these organizations. For example, the OSDP standard, since it's talking to panels, if you look at PSIA they're talking about the data streams between the panel and other upstream systems. Wouldn't it be great if these various specs were coordi- nated or harmonized in some fashion so that you weren't putting together puzzle pieces from two diff erent puzzles at the end of the day? Does a lack of cooperation remain between manufacturers and standards groups? My view is that manufacturers have re- ally gotten the standards message. T e industry, when I came into it roughly 10 16 / SECURITYSALES.COM / NOVEMBER 2012 years ago, was still very focused on pro- prietary architectures and proprietary interfaces, and a lot of people thought that was a defense of their position in the industry. T e attitude has changed 180° at this point and people understand that standards are a net gain for the industry in security, just like they have been in IT for many years. What is a case of where new standards are needed in the industry? T ere are a number of diff erent areas that people in security work with, such as video and access control. Alarm inter- faces have been standardized for longer than anything else because the central stations needed one or two protocols at most to speak to all the devices in the fi eld. T ere was a very natural reason to standardize on the equipment side. T e cloud is doing the same thing that central stations did before in the sense that you have a focal point and you have lots of diff erent devices wanting to talk to that focal point. And they need to speak the same or similar languages in order for that whole architecture to work. T ere are other parts of the industry, things that are a bit more peripheral. Audio would be an example, and use of VoIP and SIP [session initiation protocol] architecture. T at's really replacing a lot of proprietary ways of doing audio between devices. Mass notifi cation used to be a proprietary thing and now it has standards around that. We're always looking for the new places that need standards, but I would say the industry's attitude has come around and participa- tion levels have gone way up. FIND IT ON THE WEB For much more from our conversation, visit securitysales.com/hotseat.

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