On Monday, the not for profit prpl Foundation, an open-source, community-driven, collaborative, foundation with a focus on enabling next-generation datacenter-to-device portable software and virtualized architectures, announced a deal with the Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA), an international not-for-profit industry association dedicated to the advancement of intelligent home and intelligent building technologies.
The mutual alliance will see both membership groups working together on research projects and whitepapers to improve standards in smart home security.
prpl (pronounced “Purple”) represents leaders in the technology industry investing in innovation in efficiency, portability and compatibility for the good of a broad community of developers, businesses and consumers. Initial domains targeted by prpl include data center, networking and storage, connected consumer and embedded/IoT.
CABA is an international not-for-profit industry association dedicated to the advancement of intelligent home and intelligent building technologies. The organization is supported by an international membership of over 330 organizations involved in the design, manufacture, installation and retailing of products relating to home automation and building automation.
Public organizations, including utilities and government are also members. CABA’s mandate includes providing its members with networking and market research opportunities. CABA also encourages the development of industry standards and protocols, and leads cross-industry initiatives.
“prpl’s alliance with CABA is an incredibly important step in the advancement of smart home technology,” said Art Swift, president of the prpl Foundation. “By collaborating with CABA’s wealth of smart home security experts and members, we will work together to provide high quality research and guidance that will push IoT industry standards to make sure that consumers are kept safe as connected device usage in their homes grows.”
Prpl’s recent Smart Home Security Report found that the smart home isn’t coming, it’s already here and device adoption in certain cases has reached a tipping point despite it being woefully insecure.
By aligning itself with CABA, an organization that is supported by an international membership of nearly 350 companies and 25,000+ industry professionals, the two organizations will progress security developments within smart home technologies.
“We are delighted to enter this alliance with the prpl Foundation as a demonstration of our commitment to developing industry standards and protocols across industry initiatives,” said Ron Zimmer, president and CEO of CABA. “We look forward to participating in prpl’s vibrant, open-source communities, in particular the security working group, and collaborating on future smart home projects.”
The prpl Foundation promotes the use of open source software to better security and interoperability of IoT. It has created a comprehensive framework for Securing Critical Areas of Embedded Computing, a peer-reviewed, actionable guide that has been put in to practice with a successful proof of concept.
“IoT security is not a problem that is going to be fixed by one single entity, it will take the industry at large to get involved to create communities and advance our knowledge of the subject matter,” said Swift. “Prpl is pleased to be working with CABA and welcomes the opportunity to work with others to promote better standards for IoT and making the connected world more secure for consumers.”
Earlier this month, Eric Schultz, community manager for prpl Foundation, collaborated with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Technological Advisory Council Software Controlled Radios Sub-Working Group. In this role, Schultz will help educate and guide other TAC members on how proposed FCC regulations may affect the open source community and the growth of the IoT, and explore how the various stakeholders can better work together.
The move is very significant for the prpl Foundation which can act as a bridge between the IoT industry, the open source community, regulators and consumers, who each have different views regarding the security of IoT that are sometimes at odds.
The prpl Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Embedded Computing framework fills these gaps and makes sure each stakeholder group is appeased.
