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Proximex's Larry Lien is the new chairman at PSIA, the Physical Security Interoperability Alliance.

PSIA Vice Chairman Marine Drive of Honeywell says the alliance is creating specifications that aren't a glue of protocols, but which have are "lightweight," secure and which have a systems approach.

July 12, 2011 -- Just last week, the Physical Security Interoperability Alliance (PSIA) announced leadership changes for its chairman and vice chairman roles, with Larry Lien of Proximex named chairman and Marine Drive of Honeywell named vice chairman (see PSIA press release on this topic).

The PSIA organization is a vendor-led affiliation which creates specifications for interoperability among IP-connected physical security devices, and according to new chairman Larry Lien, the time is ripe in the industry for specifications and standards for interoperability to be introduced.

"Right now is a critical point in the security inustry for standards," said Lien, who takes over from prior chairman Dave Fowler, a former VidSys staff member. "People are taking note and seeing value in standards, and the manufacturers are starting to adopt them. I saw this 20 years ago in the IT industry, and watched this happen as things like XML were emerging."

PSIA notably has released specifications that touch on most of the major components of commercial security systems. The organization has specifications out for interfaces between IP cameras, video analytics, video storage and area control (access control and intrusion/alarming).

The organization certainly isn't the only entity working to create interface specifications that will allow compatibility. Also in existence is ONVIF, the Open Network Video Interface Forum. The ONVIF group, which has seen strong growth among video technology producing firms, started out working on IP camera system compatibility, but announced its expansion beyond video into access control in the spring of 2010.

The difference between the organizations, said Lien, is that while ONVIF has expanded into access control after starting out purely as an organization driven by top camera makers Axis, Bosch and Sony, the PSIA organization was founded with an all-systems approach. The PSIA board reflects the whole-systems approach, with membership anchored by Honeywell, UTC and Tyco said Lien. Recently those three companies all announced that they would release PSIA-conforming products in 2012; Honeywell and UTC spelled out that those would include access and intrusion products. The full list of board members, as published on PSIA's website, shows a variety of members, from video-only product makers to companies focused purely on access, as well as hardware manufacturers and even companies in the systems integration business.

Lien said that from his own employer's perspective, this adoption of standards makes his day-to-day job even easier. As vice president of product management for PSIM company Proximex, part of the work he has to do is coordinate integrations among the varied security systems Proximex must interface.