SIA panel identifies three data communication standards

SIA is an ANSI-certified standards developing organization

The Security Industry Association (SIA) has identified three data communication protocols as standards for electronic security devices

The Security Industry Association (SIA) has identified three data communication protocols as standards for electronic security devices as part of an effort to improve the ability of the devices to work with each other.

Access control, video surveillance and other components of security systems often use communication formats that are incompatible with each other, making it difficult to link them in a single network. SIA's Pan Industry Data Model Subcommittee is seeking to remedy this by establishing standard communication protocols, or "bindings," that will allow for greater interoperability. At a recent meeting, the panel identified three such protocols:

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for streaming audio.
Real-time Transport Protocol/Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTP/RTSP) for streaming video.
Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) for non-streaming content.

The subcommittee's selections are to be included in SIA's Open Systems Interoperability and Performance Standards (OSIPS), a family of standards that addresses an ever-growing number of technical aspects of electronic security devices. OSIPS already includes standards for the data used by individual security components, and industry demand has been growing for bindings standards that will enable those components to communicate with each other.

"Now that the hard work on the data models is substantially complete, it is exciting to finally turn to the bindings to expedite industry acceptance and use of the OSIPS standards," said Rob Zivney, vice president of marketing for Hirsch Electronics and a member of both the subcommittee and SIA's Board of Directors. "Our data models have addressed such a comprehensive range of use cases that we knew we needed a comprehensive and scalable set of bindings. This is a good start to build upon."

The identification of bindings standards is part of a revision to the OSIPS Framework, a set of SIA-developed standards approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in August. The subcommittee is continuing to work on incorporating the bindings standards into the framework, and discussions are expected on issues related to security and performance, as well as the completeness of the selections.