The State of Security Industry Standards: An Update From the OSS Association

On Feb. 11, 2025, the Security Industry Association (SIA) Standards Committee hosted a webinar on the state of security industry standards. In a discussion moderated by SIA Standards Committee Chair Peter Boriskin (chief technology officer at ASSA ABLOY Opening Solutions, experts from SIA and fellow industry-related standards development organizations (SDOs) highlighted their most recent developments. Here, Frederik Hamburg, chairman of the OSS Association, shares the latest updates on the organization’s standards initiatives.

At OSS, all specifications are defined and written by member companies, the working group usually stays on board because existing standards need to be maintained over time.

At the moment, Standard Offline is being updated, and we are waiting for the next version, which will be 1.3.

New potential specifications are discussed in the steering board, and if agreement is reached, interested members form a working group and start working independently.

We are currently working on two new specifications:

• The Secure Entrance Protocol (SEP) is designed to replace a dry contact for all physical barriers. This is not new, but each manufacturer of gates, turnstiles, bollards, etc., has its own protocol, which means that if you can open your gate, you probably cannot open your barriers. We want to develop a protocol that solves this problem.
• The second specification is a reader protocol. We have stripped an existing reader protocol, and the working group will define what features a standard reader should have to ensure interoperability of readers in most access ecosystems.

All of our specifications are free and can be used by anyone. We encourage other standardization organizations to use our specifications, or parts of them, for inclusion in their own standards.

The Connectivity Standards Alliance is working on Aliro, and we heard in SIA’s webinar that ONVIF is working on a host-cloud connectivity standard. Both are useful for mobile access, and perhaps we can use those standards as well. Some of our members are also active members in your organizations.

Read more highlights from the State of Industry Standards webinar and watch the video here.

The views and opinions expressed in guest posts and/or profiles are those of the authors or sources and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Security Industry Association (SIA).