SIA Standards to Launch SNMP MIB Project
The Security Industry Association Standards Committee has announced plans to begin work on a security industry-specific set of attributes relating to Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) Management Information Base (MIB) structure.
As the number of security devices that are hosted on an enterprise network grows, SIA Standards believes that defining these security-specific information bases will greatly increase both the security and the reliability of network-based security equipment. The SNMP allows monitoring and supervision of network devices. SNMP commands operate through MIBs embedded in the IP device. Currently, there are no standard MIBs defined by the security industry, leaving individual manufacturers to define custom MIBs in their products. This project would define a set of industry-wide MIBs that could be used to provide a uniform means of monitoring security devices within the widely-used SNMP structure.
An ad-hoc SIA Standards Subcommittee chaired by Ray Coulombe, managing director of SecuritySpecifiers.com, will begin work on this project in early August.
“This is an obvious opportunity for the SIA Standards Committee to plug a big hole,” Coulombe said. “Most responsible vendors offer SNMP functionality, but there is no guidance on exactly what this should provide. This effort will bring the industry into closer harmony with a major IP-related protocol and allow for better integration of security devices into the network fabric.”
Those interested in joining the subcommittee should contact Joe Gittens, SIA’s director of standards, at jgittens@siaonline.org.