San Jose, Calif. – Jan. 17, 2017 – The IPSO Alliance (IPSO) announced that its Security, Privacy and Identity (SPI) Working Group has published its charter. The charter provides a framework for the Working Group to help the industry address the urgent challenge of secure IoT interoperability by identifying and describing best practices for the authorization, authentication, privacy, integrity and confidentiality services of IP-based smart objects, as well as object life cycles. Additionally, the SPI Working Group is chartered to identify interoperable solutions for needed functions that aren’t being addressed by existing standards, using crowdsourcing methods such as plugfests and hackathons.

“Technical Working Groups are the key to achieving IPSO’s goal of advancing the IoT, and our members have indicated that SPI is among their top priorities,” said Christian Légaré, president and chairman of the IPSO Alliance. “By defining and publishing its charter, the SPI Working Group has outlined its vision to guide the industry as it improves IoT security and privacy.”

The initial charter deliverables include comprehensive white papers that will make recommendations in the following key areas:

  • IoT Roots of Trust: integrated methods that enable IoT devices with constrained resources to verify code before running it, establish their trustworthiness to other devices and securely connect with them
  • Cross-Domain Security Policy Profiles: allowing smart objects to securely communicate across many different implementations and protocols
  • Message-Level Signing, Encryption and Key Management: enabling the secure use of any transport method or standard, by moving security to the message itself
  • IoT Privacy Best Practices: provide a comprehensive overview of the top methods for implementing privacy in IoT devices and services

In addition to white papers, the SPI Working Group will contribute to the primary IPSO objective of enabling interoperability among IoT standards. The first charter deliverable in this area is to analyze the security, privacy and identity of current IPSO work products and meta models.

Interested in joining the discussion? Contact the IPSO Alliance to learn about the benefits of membership.

About the IPSO Alliance

The IPSO Alliance is a global forum comprising a diverse international membership of companies and nonprofit organizations focused on developing the definition of a smart-object framework with an emphasis on the aspects of identity and privacy. IPSO Alliance membership is open to any organization supporting an IP-based approach to connecting smart objects.