ONVIF and Security Industry Association: Joint Webinar to Discuss “State of Standards”

Peter Boriskin, chair of the SIA Standards Committee and chief technology officer at ASSA ABLOY Opening Solutions Americas, and Leo Levit, chairman of the ONVIF Steering Committee and director of systems integration at Axis Communications offered their perspectives on how interoperability standards have accelerated the growth of the security industry and discuss current and future potential directions, impacts and areas of growth.

Following brief presentations from Levit and Boriskin, attendees were invited to pose questions to the speakers and discuss trends and needs from the standards community. A key component of the discussion was how web standards and other standards from outside the industry are impacting the standards landscape for companies developing security solutions. Attendees were also presented with information on how to become involved in each organizations’ standards development efforts.

Based in the Washington, D.C., area, SIA has more than 1,300 innovative member companies representing thousands of security leaders and experts who shape the future of the security industry. As an ANSI-accredited standards organization, SIA, through its Standards Committee is responsible for overseeing the development and maintenance of many standards on a variety of technical areas, including access control, alarms and intrusion, audio verification, false alarm reduction and architectural graphics. The group is best known for its Open Supervised Device Protocol (ODSP), an access control communications standard that supports encryption for more secure communication between access control components, such as card reader and control panels.

With roughly 500 member companies around the globe, ONVIF is a well-recognized industry forum that provides and promotes interoperability specifications to the physical security industry. It supports a standardized approach to the integration of video surveillance and access control components and software. In all, ONVIF offers seven profiles, the most recent of which is Profile M, which standardizes metadata and events for analytics applications and expands the pathways for the use of metadata and events into such systems as access control, cloud services and IoT platforms.

“The growing demand for open platforms means that interoperability standards will be more important than ever for meeting key end-user needs for security, business intelligence and the unique requirements of their particular application,” said Levit. “We are excited to be partnering with SIA for this important discussion on how the standards community can best help organizations to more easily leverage interoperability options that can significantly drive future efficiencies and growth.”

“At SIA, our standards have helped improve interoperability among solution providers and we’re seeing an increased need for standards in the market. This is especially relevant now as our members and the security marketplace expands in scope and seeks connectivity with a broader array of devices and systems,” said Boriskin. “This webinar will mark the starting point of increased collaboration between ONVIF and SIA, as our members seek to identify shared goals in the area of standards for the security industry.”