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Standards & bodies

IEC

The International Electrotechnical Commission, the standards body for electrical and electronic technology, responsible for standards from industrial security (IEC 62443) to functional safety.

The IEC publishes international standards for everything electrical, from connectors and cables to industrial communication and safety. For IoT, the most relevant are IEC 62443, the series on security for industrial automation and control systems, the functional safety standards used in machinery and process plants, and the joint ISO/IEC work on IoT architecture and vocabulary, including ISO/IEC 30141. Industrial protocols such as OPC UA and several fieldbuses are also published as IEC standards.

IEC standards are developed by national committees and are often adopted word for word as European or national standards, which is why they appear in procurement specifications and in the harmonized standards lists behind CE marking. For an industrial IoT project, IEC 62443 in particular shapes how zones, conduits and device security levels are defined between the supplier, the integrator and the plant owner.

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