Overview of Intelligent Building Management Systems Guidance

intelligent building management systems

The Security Industry Association recently partnered with the ASIS Foundation and the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) International to release groundbreaking, first-of-its-kind guidance for practitioners in the security and building management fields. Intelligent Building Management Systems (IBMS): Guidance for Protecting Organizations provides a framework to help decision makers assign a risk-based criticality or impact to their building and asks relevant security questions to develop appropriate mitigation strategies. It also serves to establish a common language between the many intelligent building stakeholders.

The IBMS mitigation guidance defines and provides examples of IBMS and vulnerabilities. Additionally, the resource identifies and mitigates IBMS risks through a facility level checklist. The security questions answered are dependent on the risk level of the facility. Questions are divided into criticality levels, from level 1 (low) to level 5 (critical). To use the IBMS guidance, follow these steps:

  1. Identify your organizational criticality level
  2. Respond to the IBMS security questions for your identified criticality level
  3. Check off compliance with each question
  4. Where compliance is not achieved, define a responsible person and date of action

These parameters and the rest of the guidance are based on original research, Building Automation & Control Systems: An Investigation into Vulnerabilities, Current Practice and Security Management Best Practice, by David J. Brooks, Michael Coole and Paul Haskell-Dowland of Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia. The research provides an exhaustive overview of identified intelligent building critical vulnerabilities and mitigation strategies.

Access the guidance, along with an infographic and the full research, here.