The IoT security services provider has signed up to the initiative aimed at driving the adoption of fog computing to solve main IoT challenges.

Californian startup Sensify Security has joined OpenFog Consortium to help develop global security and privacy requirements for fog computing.

The OpenFog Consortium is a group of leading technology companies, such as Cisco, Dell, Intel, and Microsoft, aimed at accelerating the deployment of fog computing technologies.

Fog computing is a new horizontal architecture to run data-dense, mission critical Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G applications. It can solve the bandwidth, latency and communications challenges of networks using IoT systems.

“From autonomous cars to drones to smart factories, the rapid transfer of information is driving critical operational decisions. Systems aren’t slowing down for security checks. Identifying, authenticating and authorizing devices and the data they generate from the edge to the cloud and back, needs to happen with sub-millisecond accuracy,” said Helder Antunes, chairman of the OpenFog Consortium and senior director of Corporate Strategic Innovation Group at Cisco.

“Sensify’s approach is a strong example of what we’re driving with the OpenFog Reference Architecture. We’re looking forward to Sensify’s contributions as we define the necessary access control, policy management and distribution approach to open, interoperable fog environments,” he said.

Sensify offers protection of IoT devices against cyberattacks by providing decentralized information security services that are integrated with enterprise security. The company uses a blockchain-based consensus protocol for tamper-resistant, secure propagation of security services from the enterprise to IoT devices that encompass users, applications and control systems.

“With our focus on industrial and commercial operations, Sensify ensures security and business continuity over large territories undeterred by intermittent network connectivity and cybersecurity attacks,” said Susanto Irwan, co-founder of Sensify.

“Sensify is committed to contributing and collaborating with OpenFog members to establish security reference architectures that address IoT security challenges and serve as a foundational block for fog computing”

Earlier this year, Cisco, a co-founder of OpenFog Consortium, partnered with a group of other companies to form an IoT blockchain consortium. The initiative, which also includes Bosch, Bank of New York Mellon, Foxconn, Gemalto, Consensus Systems, BitSE and Chronicled, is aimed at developing a shared blockchain protocol for the Internet of Things.

A few days ago, the group unveiled an API that brings together technologies provided by JP Morgan’s Quorum, the Hyperledger project, and ethereum. “The protocol allows users to register multiple kinds of weaker identities, including serial numbers, QR codes, and UPC code identities and bind them to stronger cryptographic identities, which are immutably linked across both physical and digital worlds using blockchain technology,” the press-release reads.

The software development kits are now available in beta version via the Hyperledger and Chronicled GitHub libraries.