OCF Offers New Educational Resources
With an increasing number of people confined to their homes, the year 2020 has shed light on the utmost importance of simple, secure IoT technology. This year, OCF has made numerous updates to its specifications, with a common goal to make IoT manufacturers’ product development both cost-effective and uncomplicated, and the end-user’s experience seamless and secure.
These updates include the release of the OCF Universal Cloud Interface (UCI), IoT security baseline mapping and the new Simple Secure Multicast (SSM) feature. To help OCF members and the industry better understand these technological advancements, OCF experts have developed educational white papers on each topic. These white papers offer deep dives and unique insights into how and why these advancements have been made. Below we provide an overview of the new topical white papers now available for download:
OCF Universal Cloud Interface (UCI) White Paper
In July 2020, OCF announced the OCF 2.2.0 specification, which included the OCF Universal Cloud Interface (UCI), and a complementary OCF Cloud-to-Cloud (C2C) Certification program. This effort is the first of its kind in the industry, paving the way for manufacturers’ clouds to securely interoperate with one another via a standardized cloud API. The OCF UCI allows vendors to avoid additional development costs and resource expenditure for custom developed C2C APIs. In this white paper, OCF provides a comprehensive overview of the OCF UCI and plgd, the open source implementation of the UCI now available on Github. Readers will learn about OCF UCI business scenarios and technical requirements as well as the importance of plgd and the OCF C2C certification program.
The white paper is available in both English and Chinese on the OCF website here.
Open Connectivity Security Specification White Paper
The OCF Security Specification uses proven technologies and standards to ensure the best in-class security. OCF’s software-layer security framework ensures that security is not an afterthought and is the crucial first step in the IoT design process.
To provide OCF members with assurance that OCF’s security framework is trustworthy and effective, the OCF Security Oversight Work Group focused its 2020 efforts on identifying which industry guidelines and mandates the OCF Security Specification meets. These guidelines included the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) recommendations IoT device manufacturers, Consumer Technology Association (CTA) C2 Consensus, UK’s Code of Practice for Consumer IoT Security, European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) Baseline Security Recommendations for IoT and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) Baseline Security Requirements for IoT.
In the OCF Security Specification White Paper, readers are introduced to the OCF Security Specification, OCF security fundamentals and given an overview of the industry IoT security baselines met by the OCF specification today. Read the white paper here.
Simple Secure Multicast White Paper
The OCF Core Framework has been designed to securely transport data between clients and servers. In October 2020, the OCF Commercial Buildings Work Group released the new Simple Secure Multicast (SSM) feature to fill a gap in the interaction models of OCF.
SSM was created to address specific use cases in which a single action is used to control multiple devices. For example, a single light illuminating an entire hallway of lights. The logical approach would be to send a multicast message to a group of devices, allowing all devices in that group to turn on/off at the same time. SSM enables this type of message feature and ensures it is done securely using OSCORE (Object Security for Constrained RESTful Environments).
In a new white paper, readers can learn how to use SSM to send a single command to multiple devices. View the white paper today.
Through the release of these white papers, OCF hopes to provide a comprehensive overview of OCF’s offerings, and better educate the industry on the various OCF technologies available to support the evolving IoT ecosystem. For more educational resources, we encourage you to visit the OCF blog and technical articles page on the OCF website.