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OCF Experts Share Their IoT Security Insights

Posted on: July 1, 2020

Open Connectivity Foundation continues to address the need for a secure IoT environment with its “secure-by-design” approach, security specification and ongoing collaboration with government and cybersecurity organizations. In addition to these tactics, OCF experts actively contribute their security knowledge and insights to the greater IoT community to further promote OCF’s vision for a safeguarded, reliable IoT ecosystem.

Below, we have highlighted a few security-focused resources developed by OCF experts that give end users and other IoT enthusiasts an in-depth look into OCF technology and how it can be used to optimize the IoT:

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FAQ

Background Information

What is the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF)?

Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) is making the IoT attainable by establishing the necessary interoperability standard for connected devices - enabling them to discover and communicate with one another, regardless of manufacturer, operating system, chipset or physical transport.

The Foundation is unlocking the massive opportunity of the IoT market, accelerating industry innovation and helping developers and businesses create solutions that map to a single open connectivity specification. OCF is creating secure device discovery and connectivity that the IoT market needs to advance through several initiatives, including the writing of the OCF Specification (with its corresponding OCF Security Framework) as well as product certification and testing.

What are the objectives of OCF?

By delivering a single solution covering interoperability across multiple vertical markets and use cases, OCF’s members are bringing OCF Certified products to the market that can effortlessly communicate. OCF is also helping make the end user’s experience better by seamlessly bridging to other ecosystems and ensuring interoperability with OCF Certified devices regardless of operating system or platform.

Who comprises OCF?

Does OCF test and certify IoT products and devices?

To ensure device interoperability, security and a solid customer experience, OCF offers OCF, UPnP, and AllJoyn® testing and certification. These certification and testing programs help improve consumer confidence and ultimately reduce product returns to manufacturers’ by ensuring that certified devices comply with the OCF Specifications.

Open Connectivity Foundation Certification Testing is available to OCF Gold level members and above, and must be conducted at an OCF approved Authorized Test Lab. A list of OCF Authorized Test Labs is here.

What’s the history of Open Connectivity Foundation?

In 2014, the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) was formed to work on standardizing communication between IoT devices. Late in 2015, with the intent to develop Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) to include IoT devices, the UPnP Forum announced that OIC would acquire its assets. The following year, OIC changed its name into Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) to help reduce the standards fragmentation in the IoT industry. OCF is building on OIC’s previous work and is developing an IoT communication standard that allows devices to interoperate regardless of form factor, operating system, service provider, transport technology or ecosystem.

In 2016, in a continued effort to reduce IoT standards fragmentation, OCF, the sponsor of the IoTivity open source project, and AllSeen Alliance, which provided the AllJoyn® open source IoT framework, announced that the two organizations united under the OCF name and bylaws. This merger advances interoperability between connected devices from both groups, enabling the full operating potential of IoT and representing a significant step towards a connected ecosystem.

OCF now sponsors both the IoTivity and AllJoyn® open source projects at The Linux Foundation. Both projects will collaborate to support future versions of the OCF specification in a single IoTivity implementation that combines the best of both technologies into a unified solution.

Today, the Open Connectivity Foundation has over 370 innovative member companies and has become one of the largest standards organizations for IoT. OCF members include some of the world’s leading companies that are helping accelerate the development of an interoperability standard and the ability to make IoT a more seamless, secure experience for everyone involved. By delivering a single solution covering interoperability across multiple vertical markets and use cases, OCF members will bring OCF Certified products to the market that can safely communicate. Learn more about our members and industry partners here.

What are the vertical markets OCF is targeting?

OCF is establishing a single solution that addresses interoperability across multiple vertical markets to ensure that manufacturers and developers have the greatest opportunity to maximize interoperability and increase market share. OCF brings together companies from diverse markets including automotive, consumer electronics, enterprise, healthcare, home automation, industrial and wearables.

Currently, OCF is developing initiatives related to Smart Home solutions designed to make the end user’s experience better by seamlessly bridging ecosystems within a user’s smart home and ensuring interoperability with OCF Certified devices.

In addition to Smart Home initiatives, OCF remains committed to driving initiatives for the automotive, healthcare and industrial markets. Additionally, there is huge potential for innovation because there are greater data opportunities/broader pool of data that OCF Certified products will be able to share and leverage to create an intelligent connected ecosystem.

Here is a sampling of what the OCF members are doing: Runtime and SURE Universal.

How is the OCF organized?

Membership Information

Who can join OCF?

Why should a company join OCF?

One of the biggest challenges facing today’s IoT manufacturers and developers is the lack of a single standard that addresses all the necessary requirements for a truly secure, interoperable solution for IoT devices.

OCF’s world-class member companies, as well as organizations involved in OCF, believe that secure and reliable device discovery and connectivity is the foundation that will lead to a stronger, more user-friendly Internet of Things. The members also believe that a common, interoperable approach is essential, and that both a standard and an open source implementation are the best route to enable speedy, scalable deployment.

There are numerous benefits of joining OCF, including collaborating with the most brilliant global technology leaders to solve the IoT standards chaos. Foreseeing the end of the IoT standards chaos isn’t easy, but industry collaboration goes a long way in achieving success and continued innovation. There are multiple proposals and forums driving different approaches… but no single solution addresses the majority of key requirements.

Join the growing ecosystem that is making the promise of IoT a reality.

How do companies join? What are the costs?

Technical Information

What is the OCF Specification?

Is the OCF Specification available?

What is the OCF Security Framework?

What technology does the OCF Specification support?

Open Source Projects

Why is Open Source critical to the success of IoT?

The challenge for the IoT ecosystem is to ensure emerging IoT devices can connect securely and reliably to the Internet and to each other. If not, the Internet of Things won’t reach its potential. By adopting an open source and open specification model, OCF is enabling the open source community to quickly create and implement reliable, secure device discovery and connectivity across a broad range of operating systems, platforms, transports and vendors.

To ensure the open nature of the OCF project, anyone can download the software, and contribute to the documentation, source code or testing.

What are the IoTivity Project?

The IoTivity Project is an open source implementation of the OCF Specification. The IoTivity Project brings together the open source community to accelerate the development of a single framework and the services required to securely connect devices.

The IoTivity code is available today. You are welcome to download the code and documentation and start contributing to the project here: https://www.iotivity.org/.

OCF Certification

What is the process for becoming OCF Certified?

If I have a product based on IoTivity or OCF but that is not certified by OCF, can I claim it is compliant or conformant to OCF?

How do I look for a product that has been OCF certified?

Learn More Here

OCF Cloud Technology Enables Successful IoT Interoperability

Posted on: September 14, 2020

By Ondrej Tomcik, Kistler Group

As OCF’s Chair of Cloud Technology, I am passionate about solving the critical issues that the IoT cloud-to-cloud communications face today, as well as addressing the absence of IoT interoperability. Today, cloud communications suffer from vendor lock-in and customers have trouble plugging non-interoperable IoT devices into different IoT platforms. It is nearly impossible to develop an IoT application that is cross-platform, and/or cross-domain. These issues are important to solve, as they ultimately prevent the emergence of IoT technology at scale.

OCF sees the massive potential for the IoT but recognizes that the market is fragmented. Discussions and collaboration among OCF members allow for a better understanding of how various IoT manufacturers and vendors operate. These discussions help guide OCF strategies, which are developed to mend the fragmented market and create a fully interoperable IoT. McKinsey Global Institute’s Internet of Things: Mapping the Value Beyond the Hype report points out the substantial connection between interoperability and the IoT’s predicted economic value. Particularly, the authors state that 40% of the market potential can be obtained with interoperability among IoT systems. Even though the value of interoperability is clear, it remains on a side-track, with more focus on proprietary vendor lock-in solutions. The IoT industry must shift its focus and realize the value of interconnecting devices and resulting economic gain. When assessing value, it is the number of connections that devices create, rather than the number of devices themselves.

Officially launched in July 2020, the OCF Universal Cloud Interface (UCI) standardizes connectivity between different manufacturer’s cloud servers and between devices and the cloud. To promote the OCF UCI and the ability to enable interoperability among cloud vendors, Kistler Group participated in the Bosch Connected World Hackathon (BCX2020) in February 2020. There, we were able to speak to different companies about OCF’s work and discuss the struggles that developers face. We found that most developers struggled with different data models, as well as obtaining and understanding the data. Making two different IoT solutions interoperable is not an easy thing to do. It’s not only about bridging the protocols, but also about the interoperability of the data model. Luckily, with OCF technology, even if the device comes from a different IoT Solution, we can map it to the standardized model that OCF defines.

At the BCX2020 event, we demonstrated how two IoT cloud offerings (Microsoft IoT Hub and Bosch IoT Things) can be interoperable on the cloud-to-cloud level. The Kistler team was able to successfully present Account Linking using OAuth2.0 as it is specified in the OCF UCI specification: After logging into the Bosch IoT Things, the user was able to use his Bosch IoT Dashboard to the Account Linking process with the Microsoft IoT Hub. Once there was successful authentication and consent approval, Bosch IoT was then allowed to communicate on behalf of the Microsoft IoT Hub user with his/her devices. As a concrete example of this communications, the user had a device with a light connected to Bosch IoT Things and a switch connected to the Microsoft IoT Hub. Both devices were visible in the Bosch IoT Things dashboard and the user was able to control the light through the interoperable cloud interface.

Following the success of this OCF C2C demonstration, Kistler Group continues to be an active OCF contributor and developer of the plgd cloud technology. I encourage developers to read the OCF Cloud specification and give it a try. It is both easy to implement and use. This technology will help ensure that you can communicate between your system with member IoT Devices over their cloud. In addition to OCF UCI, we have launched plgd, an open source OCF cloud reference implementation. This open source solution provides a complete set of tools and services so you can manage your devices at scale in a cloud native way. It is secure from the start, with end-to-end security built in. Developers can access the plgd open source solution on Github to begin taking advantage of OCF UCI today.

For more details on OCF UCI technology, read our previous OCF blog, which describes today’s cloud landscape and how OCF UCI solves the roadblocks to cloud Interoperability, security and partnerships.

A Year in Review: OCF 2019 Accomplishments Pave the Way for Secure and Interoperable IoT

Posted on: January 2, 2020

By John Park, Executive Director of OCF

2019 saw a significant amount of IoT coverage, ranging from healthcare impact, to exciting technology developments and massive market expansion. While many of the IoT discussions were positive, scrutiny was also prominent, with concerns about IoT security breaches and implementation barriers dominating the news cycle…. [Read More]

IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act: New Guidelines to Solve IoT Security Challenges

Posted on: February 19, 2021

As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to become more prevalent in our everyday lives – both at home and in the workplace – security of connected devices remains an ongoing priority of Open Connectivity Foundation specifications (OCF). OCF technology is at the forefront of IoT security and OCF members regularly monitor industry cybersecurity guidelines to remain abreast of new trends, guidelines and regulations. This is made evident by OCF’s alignment with five key industry security baselines.

One such regulation OCF is closely following this year is the IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act. Passed in late 2020 with bipartisan support, the law requires device manufacturers or OEMs selling to US government agencies to demonstrate compliance with cybersecurity guidelines. Although the act currently only applies to federal government agencies, the regulations are expected to trickle down to the private sector.