Kaleidoscope 2014
Living in a converged world – impossible without standards? That’s the question posed as the title of the sixth ITU Kaleidoscope academic conference. Kaleidoscope 2014 will be hosted by Bonch-Bruevich Saint-Petersburg State University of Telecommunications (SPbSUT), Russian Federation, 3-5 June 2014.
Kaleidoscope events are peer-reviewed academic conferences that increase dialogue between academics and experts working on ICT standardization.
Kaleidoscope 2014 is calling for academic papers offering innovative approaches to research on the role of ICT standardization in today’s global economy characterized by accelerating convergence of industry sectors and technologies.
The conference will uncover ideas to leverage this convergence in service of the public interest. It will highlight areas where ICT standards will improve energy efficiency and ease the introduction of new services in fields spanning healthcare, education, transport, banking, energy and more. The event will also explore means to enhance the inclusivity of the Information Society; addressing the demands of people with disabilities, and the need for standards to be accessible to people of different countries and languages.
For sponsorship opportunities, please contact the ITU-T Kaleidoscope secretariat at kaleidoscope@itu.int.
For additional information, please see Kaleidoscope 2014’s webpage here.
Latest Technology Watch Report: spatial standards for the IoT
ITU-T’s latest Technology Watch report introduces readers to location (spatial) standards and their role in enabling the Internet of Things, describing how communications infrastructure has increased people’s associations with the natural and built environment as well as how this can be leveraged to improve governance and service delivery by revealing new insights into how we interact with one another and the services and infrastructures that surround us.
Authored by staff and members of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), with support from ITU-T, the report is titled “Location matters: Spatial standards for the Internet of Things” and can be downloaded free of charge here.
The report discusses the technologies and standards emerging in support of location-based services (LBS), analyzing shortfalls in interoperability and highlighting where global standardization can tap the full potential of these fast-maturing technologies and the valuable data they return.
Spatial standards’ role in the marketplace is critiqued with a view to uncovering clear trends or market drivers, and readers will discover that location matters in a wide range of sectors, with examples being made of emergency and disaster management and response; smart infrastructure; smart water management; and, of course, transportation.
The report goes on to describe the spatial standards landscape, looking at the activities of the involved standardization bodies and concluding with an analysis of the greatest obstacles to be overcome in the spatial standards arena.
More information on the Technology Watch series can be found here, and experts interested in authoring or contributing to future Technology Watch reports are encouraged to contact the TechWatch secretariat at tsbtechwatch@itu.int.
Industry drives new eco-rating scheme for mobile devices
Experts attending last week’s ITU
Green Standards Week have called for a new, globally aligned eco-rating scheme for mobile devices. The proposed eco-rating scheme would extend across networks, manufacturers and national boundaries and empower consumers to make informed purchasing decisions based on a standardized assessment of a mobile phone’s environmental impact.
Organizations working with ITU’s Standardization Sector on the new scheme include device makers Alcatel-Lucent, Apple, BlackBerry, Fujitsu, Huawei, Motorola, Nokia and Samsung, operators AT&T, Orange, KPN, Telefónica and Vodafone, and industry partners including the GSMA.
For industry, the new scheme will mark a simplification of the process of gathering and processing eco-efficiency information. For consumers, it will provide an easy-to-understand, credible rating that allows them to choose mobile devices with a lower environmental impact.
Criteria under consideration in the development of the new scheme include carbon footprint; battery life; the use of certain chemicals and rare metals; packaging; and recyclability, among others. The standard will be developed prioritizing principles such as lifecycle assessment, simplicity, transparency, feasibility and verifiability.
Dr Hamadoun I. Touré, Secretary-General, ITU: “Consumers are increasingly looking to make sustainable purchasing decisions. A key problem has been a bewildering array of eco-rating schemes. I applaud this initiative that will drive green innovation and allow us all to make informed decisions when we purchase mobile devices.”
Francisco Montalvo, Global Director of Devices, Telefónica: “Telefónica uses environmental criteria including energy consumption, CO2 emissions and recyclability to evaluate and select devices, but we have found great difficulty with the absence of a common methodology for each manufacturer to report details on their devices. There is clearly a strong need for a common framework to enable industrial implementation.”
New ITU standards on cloud computing security & digital object architecture
ITU members have agreed new international standards (ITU-T Recommendations) outlining security considerations essential to cloud computing and, crucial to the long-term preservation and utility of IP-based resources, a ‘framework for the discovery of identity management information’ to enable interoperability across heterogenous information systems.
Recommendation ITU-T X.1600 “Security framework for cloud computing”, having reached first-stage approval (‘determined’) and now undergoing a final review, describes security threats in the cloud computing environment and, through a framework methodology, matches threats with the security capabilities advised to be specified in mitigating them. ITU-T X.1600 will act as a ‘handbook’ guiding the future standardization of identified threat-mitigation techniques; in addition providing an implementation reference for systems-level cloud security.
Recommendation ITU-T X.1255 “Framework for the discovery of identity management information”, approved and soon to be freely available on ITU’s website, details an open architecture framework in which identity management (IdM) information – identifying ‘digital objects’ and enabling information sharing among entities including subscribers, users, networks, network elements, software applications, services and devices – can be discovered, accessed and represented by heterogenous IdM systems representing IdM information in different ways, supported by a variety of trust frameworks and employing different metadata schemas.
ITU-T X.1255 lays out a framework that enables discovery of identity-related information and its provenance; identity-related information attributes, including but not limited to visual logos and human-readable site names; and attributes and functionality of applications. The framework, in addition, describes a data model and protocol to enable meta-level interoperability in the management of this information across heterogeneous IdM environments.
The Recommendation is a first step towards the Digital Object Architecture (DOA) advocated by the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), which is intended to achieve the “universal information access” possible with uniquely identifiable digital objects structured so as to ensure their machine and platform independence.
The new Recommendations were agreed at a meeting of ITU-T Study Group 17 (Security) in Geneva, 26 August to 04 September, which also saw the establishment of three new work items, on: •high-speed Abstract Syntax Notation (ASN.1) Octet Encoding Rules (OER) needed by the financial services sector to gain milliseconds on the trading floor; •updating the Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS) to eliminate all obsolete ASN.1 features in the interests of making the CMS usable with all ASN.1 standardized encoding rules; and, •new challenges for Public-Key Infrastructure (PKI) standardization presented by mobile networks, machine-to-machine (M2M) communication, cloud computing and smart grid.
More information on the work of ITU-T Study Group 17 can be found here.
Green cables ahoy!
A project to pursue the concept of using telecommunication undersea cables for climate monitoring and disaster warning was further developed at a recent event, held as part of the 3rd ITU Green Standards Week in Madrid.
These new ‘green cables’ will enable the collection and delivery of data to the scientific community, and other industries such as fisheries and energy.
The idea of the JTF, with more than 80 members, is to develop a pilot project (a so-called ‘wet demonstrator’) with the active participation of cable suppliers, owners and researchers from existing ocean observatories, explained Chris Barnes, professor at the University of Victoria in Canada, and Chairman of the JTF.
Experts have deemed the project to be technically feasible with the JTF members now working on how to solve business, legal and economic issues.
Specific issues discussed at the recent meeting included proposals for studies on Engineering Functional Specifications and the development of a business model. A communiqué soliciting funding for both is being prepared and will be sent to possible sponsors.
The JTF is also working on supporting publications including white papers on Science and Societal Requirements for Sensors in Submarine Telecommunication Cables and Engineering Functional Requirements for Supporting Sensors in Submarine Cables.
Richard ‘Dick’ C. Brackney
ITU regrets to announce the death of Col. Richard ‘Dick’ C. Brackney (Ret.).
Dick was a well-known and respected authority on international cybersercurity and had contributed greatly to ITU’s work in the field over a period of more than ten years.
In August he sent a message to his colleagues: “Dear colleagues at MS and International Standards Community: I have enjoyed my work in the Standards community over the years. But, the time has come for it to end. I’ve learned over this summer that time is VERY precious and my time has ended. Thank you all for your support! —Dick”.
Dick had a wide and varied career including 35 years at the US National Security Agency and 3 at Microsoft. He served in combat during Desert Shield/Desert Storm and was the recipient of numerous service decorations including two National Defense Service Medals, and a Meritorious Service Medal.
He will be sadly missed by all including ITU staff, delegates of Study Groups 13 and 17 and the standards and cybersecurity communities at large.
A viewing/memorial service took place on September 17th in Maryland . In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in memory of Dick to the American Heart Association
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