Sept. 21, 2011 -- Talk to many people involved in the security industry about IP standardization, and the prevailing question is, “Who's gonna win?” After all, the PSIA and ONVIF are in a race, right?

Whether it was by design or not at ASIS 2011 on Tuesday, the two leading (and competing) standardization bodies both held update conferences at the identical time in separate hotels in front of packed audiences. Despite that seemingly competitive timing of the two bodies' events, PSIA staunchly maintains that this is not a race, fight or competition. In fact, PSIA (the Physical Security Interoperability Alliance) said it is fundamentally different than its competitor.

“We are more likely to co-exist because of our differences in philosophy,” PSIA president Dave Bunzell said of the two bodies. “We have had a number of conversations and keep an open dialogue with ONVIF.”

So, what's the difference between them?

From PSIA's point of view, they take an overall systems approach to interoperability and standardization. “We take a systems-level approach,” PSIA Board Chairman and vice president of product management for Proximex Larry Lien said. “We are tackling head-end systems to drive a better end-to-end experience.”

“This is not just about device-level communications,” he continued. “We are taking a more holistic approach across all the different systems out there today, and we already have full specs for video, access, intrusion, VMS, storage and more.”

PSIA standards will be adopted at the systems level, which Lien said makes communicating between systems easier across all levels, thus creating a better solution and experience for the end-user.

The group also introduced a three-person customer panel moderated by James Connor of N2N Secure. The panel consisted of Bill Minear, senior security consultant for Trusys; Mike Faddis, group manager of the Microsoft Global Security Team; and Carlos Pinel, a technology program manager for Cisco.

“We have a great relationship (with PSIA) and we certainly want to take a lead role in helping to craft these standards,” Microsoft's Faddis said. “We are looking forward to partnering with all the groups out there. We want to help lead the conversation and be a part of this process.”

According to Minear, there has been some progress toward this goal, but more work is certainly needed. “I remember when you could build a system and nothing would work together no matter what you did,” the 35-year veteran of the security industry recalled. “As a system designer and specifier, all devices really need to work together.”