Trend Micro among 22 joining AllSeen IoT Standards Group

The AllSeen Alliance added 22 new members, including security firm Trend Micro.
The AllSeen Alliance added 22 new members, including security firm Trend Micro.

In-brief: The security firm Trend Micro announced that it was joining the AllSeen Alliance, an open source platform for connecting Internet of Things devices. 

The AllSeen Alliance, a leading contender for the title of “Internet of Things standard” announced that it signed up 22 new members, including security giant Trend Micro Inc., according to a statement from the open-source consortium.

AllSeen is a nonprofit open source consortium launched by the Linux Foundation. It has released AllJoyn, an open IoT connectivity and services framework.

The announcement was timed to coincide with the Mobile World Congress gathering in Barcelona, Spain this week. Among the 22 new members are firms making connected car technology, home appliances, smart home technology and environmental control systems.

Trend Micro, an endpoint protection and anti malware firm based in Tokyo was the sole security company on the list of new members.

[Read more Security Ledger coverage of Internet of Things standards.]

In a statement, the company said that the explosive growth in mobile device use demand vigilance both in the home and at work.

“There is much more to the Internet of Things than just smart home devices,” said Eva Chen, Trend Micro co-founder and CEO. “While connected devices offer efficiencies and convenience, they are becoming increasingly vulnerable to attacks, and mobile devices are among the most targeted platforms.”

AllSeen is a leader in a crowded field of proposed Internet of Things cross-platform standards. That include’s the Open Internet Consortium backed by Dell, Samsung and others, Open Haystack and vendor-backed efforts like the Google-led Thread, Apple’s HomeKit and Intel’s IoT platform.

Since launching, AllSeen has released two versions of its open source framework, AllJoyn, and set up nine Working Groups to work on protocol development and interoperability. They include groups focused on smart lighting, home automation, security, cloud and analytics.

Microsoft announced it will implement AllJoyn in Windows 10. The AllJoyn Framework is also supported by products ranging from phones (Gramofon by Fon) to smart televisions (from LG) to smart lightbulbs (LIFX smart LED bulbs), among others.

Despite that progress, there is concern that the window for broadly accepted, cross vendor and cross industry standards has already closed.

Writing on the Harvard Business Review blog in November, Thomas Davenport and Sanjay Sarma warned that the involvement of big tech vendors in the standards process may have already made the development of Internet of Things standards impossible.

The heavy investment of large and wealthy technology companies in the standards process may ultimately make consensus impossible.

“The IoT, unfortunately, already has too many standards bodies, and in most of them technology vendors play perhaps too prominent a role,” the authors conclude.

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