TIA investigates multi-stakeholder smart building cybersecurity designs

The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) has just released a white paper entitled, “Smart Building Cybersecurity: Design Approach for Multi-Stakeholder Environments.”

Authored by various subject matter experts from TIA’s Smart Building Industry Working Group, the white paper is billed as a free resource designed to help various smart building stakeholders -- including ownership teams, facility management teams, and developers and designers -- navigate an increasingly complex and risk-laden cyber-threat landscape.

The new document's premise is that traditionally, cybersecurity has been the responsibility of IT departments in most organizations. However, TIA contends that, given the rising significance of cybersecurity for operational technology (OT), property managers, facility managers, and maintenance professionals and other stakeholders must all now play a role in protecting buildings from cyber vulnerabilities.

According to a press release, participants in the TIA's Smart Buildings Working Group produced the white paper for the global smart building community to help make information easily accessible to keep buildings safe and secure.

The TIA Smart Buildings Working Group develops and maintains the technical assessment criteria for the SPIRE Smart Building Assessment and Rating Program by UL. Cybersecurity is one of the six primary assessment categories of SPIRE.

As further stated by the new white paper's introduction:

"Smart buildings are increasingly at risk for cybersecurity and ransomware attacks that come with significant expense and the potential to halt facility operations and put lives at risk.

Stakeholder engagement during the early design phase of a smart building is critical to ensuring constructability, efficiencies, operability, and maintainability of smart building technologies. The same is true when protecting smart buildings against cyber intrusions and attacks.

This white paper describes proven processes for multiple smart building stakeholders to come together during the early design phase to achieve a common vision and parameters for improving cybersecurity."

Per TIA, contributing authors to the white paper include:

Brian Ensign, Superior Essex
David Brearly, HDR
Gayla Arrindell, Corning
Jared Morello, Legrand
Jason Christman, Johnson Controls
Jon Williamson, Johnson Controls
Seth Ely, Stantec
Sudhi Sinha, UL
Terry Haley, Haley Solutions
Tim Koch, HDR
Travis Rosiek, BluVector, a Comcast Company

“Smart buildings are changing the world for the better by making them safer for occupants, more sustainable for our planet, and more efficient for higher productivity and innovation,” notes Tom McGarry, vice president of standards at TIA. “Trust and security in smart buildings must be core elements of design and addressed at each stage of development to ensure proven protocols and processes are in place to protect buildings, occupants and stakeholders against potential threats.”