While 2020 brought many challenges as well as a significant shift in work-life circumstances, OCF’s members remained dedicated to the OCF mission. In a collaborative effort amongst key industry leaders, OCF made significant progress in OCF technology development, cybersecurity and smart building initiatives. Below we have shared a few exciting highlights from OCF’s 2020 efforts:
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A Year in Review: OCF Enables Vendor Cloud Interoperability and Strengthens IoT Security
OCF Offers New Educational Resources
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:
Fairhair
Fairhair Specification
The Fairhair Specification (download link is at the bottom of this page) is now managed by Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) and the Fairhair Alliance dissolved as an organization effective November 1, 2019. This integration of the Fairhair Specification will advance interoperability and security within the automated building and lighting IoT verticals by combining two proven, reliable IoT frameworks. Read the OCF press release here.
Through the agreement between OCF and Fairhair Alliance, OCF will maintain and improve the current Fairhair Specification while certifying Fairhair as an international standard through the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The Fairhair Specification will augment the current OCF specifications, certification programs, and open source implementations, while reducing time-to-market by establishing standardized onboarding and application frameworks for Building Automation Control and Lighting Control verticals.
The Fairhair Alliance brought together lighting, building automation and IT companies to develop a secure onboarding framework based on IP for lighting and building control in commercial buildings. The mission to create a secure onboarding framework has been achieved and documented within the Fairhair Specification.
OCF aims to provide an application framework across multiple industries with specifications. OCF based its specification on standard technologies such as Representational State Transfer (REST) and Secure Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP). In doing so, OCF has built a reliable and secure communication stack with secure integration over a local or remote network using cloud services. Secure communication is independent of the physical and application layer or vertical and can be used by third parties. In addition to writing the specifications, OCF sponsors the open source implementation of these specifications via the IoTivity program.
“By coming together as a single group, we are streamlining our efforts to address today’s automated building and lighting needs with an eye to future connectivity, security, and reliability within a multitude of verticals as the IoT continues to evolve,” said John Park, Executive Director, Open Connectivity Foundation. “We are excited to continue working on our shared goal of creating a secure, interoperable IoT.”
Current OCF specifications are intended for use in unmanaged networks, such as smart homes. Absorbing the Fairhair Specification will enable the implementation of OCF specifications in managed network scenarios, such as automated buildings. Differences between unmanaged and managed networks include:
- In-network Complexity: Unmanaged network smart home scenarios use just a single network, while automated building and managed networks have several subnets for different purposes.
- Quantity of Devices: In unmanaged (home) scenarios, the number of connected devices on a single network ranges from 10-100. A managed network within a building can include tens of thousands of connected devices.
- Access Control: In unmanaged networks, only a single administrator is needed with multiple users of the system. In a managed network, each device can have multiple end users with access to different parts of the system. For example, an employee will not have access to emergency lighting, but a firefighter will. The network setup of a smart building must cater to these differences.
OCF’s recently-launched Smart Commercial Building Project has developed a new set of requirements for devices, including more stringent device control and management. The project combines Fairhair specifications with existing Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards such as Manufacturer Usage Description (MUD), Bootstrapping Remote Secure Key Infrastructures (BRSKI), Secure CoAP, Consice Binary Object Representation (CBOR) and Pubic Key Infrastructure (PKI) to allow the devices to be safely installed without having to integrate them one by one. These solutions are applicable to other areas that deploy managed networks, such as cities and smart factories.
What is Fairhair?
Fairhair envisions a future where the building automation and lighting control industries use IoT technologies to build secure, cost-effective and scalable systems. This will enable the use of a single, unified, common IP-based network infrastructure in commercial buildings. Such a shared IP-based network also supports the use of resource-constrained devices, including sensors, lamps, luminaires, thermostats and dimmers.
The Fairhair Work Group within OCF will support strong, well-established ecosystems in addition to OCF such as BACnet, KNX and Zigbee. Fairhair does not aim to define a new application-layer protocol.
Convergence of building systems with IT facilitates IoT for commercial buildings. Each data point and sensor will be able to communicate and interact with each other, and benefit from end-to-end security for all connected devices.
The Fairhair Work Group within OCF will collect the requirements of the building automation, lighting control and IT industries and use these to develop a set of technical specifications for a common IP-based infrastructure, based on open IEEE and IETF standards.
Fairhair specifications define common network services such as security and service discovery.
Read more about IoT Security for Commercial Buildings:
- White Paper: Security Architecture for the Internet of Things (IoT) in Commercial Buildings - March 2018
- Presentation: Fairhair Alliance IoT Security for Commercial Buildings - March 2018
Get Involved
OCF will continue to work on and enhance the Fairhair Specification within a Fairhair Work Group (FHWG). To participate, review the FHWG IPR Policy and please contact [email protected] for the Participant Agreement.
Download the Fairhair Specification
Download the specification here and read the legal notice below.
Legal Notice
This Fairhair Specification is published by the Fairhair Alliance. All rights are reserved. This document is property of the Fairhair Alliance and reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited without express and prior written permission of the Fairhair Alliance. This document is being further developed by Open Connectivity Foundation, Inc. (“OCF”) under a license grant from the Fairhair Alliance Members. OCF may publish future versions of the Fairhair Specification, which may contain substantial modifications pursuant to the license from Fairhair Alliance Members. Other licensees, Zigbee, Thread and KNX, have license rights to create and make publicly available minor modifications to the Fairhair Specification. Users of the Fairhair Specification are encouraged to check the Open Connectivity website for more information regarding the current version of the Fairhair Specification.
OCF Announces Mark Trayer as OCF Chairman of the Board
The OCF Board of Directors (BoD) is made up of leading experts from innovative tech manufacturers including CableLabs, Cascoda, Haier, LG Electronics, and Samsung. These representatives are key decision makers and work to ensure the organization operations run smoothly and are in-line with OCF’s vision for the IoT. Last month, OCF was proud to welcome Mark Trayer to the BoD as Chairman of the Board. Mark brings a wealth of industry experience to the BoD and has been involved with OCF since its early inception in 2014.
We spoke with Mark about his professional background, his objectives as new BoD Chair, and his outlook on the future of OCF. Get to know the OCF BoD Chair below:
Please give us a brief introduction to yourself – what is your professional background, particularly within the IoT space?
I’ve been involved with “connectivity” the entirety of my professional career in Samsung, and prior to that, Nortel (originally BNR). Initially, I worked on the implementation of “old school” SS7 signaling systems in Digital Telephone, which evolved into architecting protocol stacks as part of Multi-media over IP solutions. I subsequently became more “residential” and user focused, working on in-home content distribution (personal content and provided content), and then into spaces that acted as a precursor to some of the early Smart Device/Smart Home solutions (Smart Energy, Smart Appliances, and associated Energy Star definitions).
I was part of the teams that worked on initial Smart Home enabling technologies for Samsung products. From there, in 2014 I was part of the launch of the Open Interconnect Consortium, which subsequently became what we know today as Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF). I have been heavily involved in contributing to OCF since that point.
As the newly elected OCF BoD Chair, how do you aim to use this role to advance OCF technology?
As OCF BoD Chair my role is to advance OCF technology through working with the other BoD members and the OCF Work Groups (WGs) to engender two key items: awareness and adoption.
For awareness, I work with other BoD members and OCF WG Chairs in active initiatives on stakeholder value, as well as the ongoing efforts of the Marketing Communications WG to position OCF effectively. We do this with targeted messaging advocating OCF as the Secure IP Device Framework of choice for the IoT.
For adoption, I work to ensure that OCF effectively supports member companies looking to bring products to market, as well as support ongoing initiatives taking place in different regions to deploy OCF technology.
Could you tell us about your history with OCF?
Samsung is a “day #1” member of OCF (originally OIC). I attended the kick-off Face-to-Face meeting in Manhattan Beach, CA, and was co-chair at that time of the original Smart Home group (with Wouter van der Beek, OCF Director). I have continued to chair the Smart Home Work Group since that very first meeting, and have also taken on the role of Core Technology Working Group Chair and Core Technology Steering Committee Chair.
I have been heavily involved in the development of the device and resource models that have been defined by OCF, working with people like Wouter van der Beek and Clarke Stevens on the tooling that accompanies these models that enables automated creation of spec material, and also automated creation of running code that realizes OCF devices.
I was also part of the key set of contributors that saw the realization of the OCF Universal Cloud Interface (C2C API) from a Power Point concept to a certifiable reality (with at least three certifications to date).
Why is OCF the standard of choice to propel IoT security to new heights?
OCF has endorsed security as a key element of its work and has a dedicated Security Work Group to maintain and update the OCF Secure IP Device Framework.
The OCF Secure IP Device Framework is a vertical agnostic infrastructure that enables secure IP communication through a standardized framework. It is also backed by an open-source implementation, which is compliant to the standard and meets the implementation verifications of our Certification Program. The framework includes network device discovery, resource/service discovery on the device, secure connectivity using DTLS for proximal (device-device) communication, onboarding on the secure domain and Access control lists.
This framework is compliant with most of the known IoT security baseline requirements – including those from NIST, CTAC, ENISA, UK, IASME and ETSI. The OCF Security Work Group has measured the OCF Secure IP Device Framework against these IoT security baselines so that you don’t have to – essentially allowing you to “compile your compliance” for regulatory IoT security requirements.
OCF offers a comprehensive Certification Program for its members. What are the benefits of OCF Certification and how does OCF Certification simplify a product’s time to market?
OCF provides a rich suite of tools to support members in bringing certified products to market. The Certification Test Tool (CTT) itself is available for free to all members, thus allowing in-house test and validation of an implementation before bringing it to an ATL for formal certification. In conjunction with this, Iotivity Lite provides an open-source implementation of the specifications that realizes the mandatory requirements, and against which each CTT release is regressed, thus ensuring alignment between specifications, code, and certification for every release.
To help in the development of a certifiable implementation and greatly simplify the associated effort, OCF also provides tools and toolchains to create running code for a device in an extremely time efficient manner, the OCF Developer Program provides tutorials and details to get started.
Could you give us a preview of what’s to come for OCF?
OCF is driving down three key paths:
- First, promoting the proven, open, Secure IP Device Framework that is defined by the Core and Core Security specifications as a fundamental element for an IoT solution or deployment. This is agnostic of the data models also defined by OCF, meaning that anyone who requires a secure, open standards-based, IP framework can take what OCF has developed (including much of the associated tooling) and build thereon.
- Second, OCF will continue to drive and support adoption of OCF as the IoT enabler for Smart Home and Smart Residential solutions. OCF ensures that any gaps in modeling or capability are met, and works with OCF member companies and the regional forums in supporting deployments, product development, certification programs, inter-operability events and more.
- Third, supporting efforts and work of the Smart Commercial Building Work Group in realizing products, solutions, and commercial deployments of OCF technology in this space.
All three of these initiatives provide the pillars of success for OCF moving forward.
Open Connectivity Foundation Announces Winners of the First Annual Outstanding Contributor Awards
IoT consortium honors member companies and other exemplary individuals contributing to its mission of ensuring secure interoperability for consumers, businesses and industries
BEAVERTON, OR – August 14, 2017 – The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF), a leading Internet of Things (IoT) standards body, today announced the winners of its first annual Outstanding Contributor Awards. These awards highlight OCF’s member companies as well as individuals who have made exemplary contributions to OCF and its work toward advancing IoT standardization.