New Standards for IoT Home Appliance Cybersecurity Released
According to China Quality News, recently, the IoT Home Appliance Cybersecurity Standards and Certification Rules were officially released, drafted by the China Quality Certification Center, the China Household Electrical Appliances Research Institute, the Fifth Research Institute of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Jiangsu Electronic Information Product Quality Supervision and Inspection Research Institute (Jiangsu Information Security Testing Center), Zhongjiayuan (Beijing) Testing and Certification Co., Ltd., the National Intelligent Home Quality Supervision and Inspection Center, the National IoT Product and Application System Quality Inspection and Testing Center, JD Group, and over 20 industry enterprises including Haier, Midea, Gree, Hisense, Arrow, and Mars Man.
The Rapid Development of the Smart Home Appliance Market
Currently, global home appliances are rapidly developing towards high-end, intelligent, and scenario-based directions, and the market scale of smart home appliances is also growing rapidly. China is the world’s largest home appliance production base. According to the latest statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China, by the end of 2022, the market scale of smart home appliances in China has increased from 200 billion in 2016 to 500 billion now. The connectivity of high-end smart home appliances brings great convenience to people, but also poses significant cybersecurity risks—data involving user privacy is recorded by various smart home appliances, and once these devices have security vulnerabilities, user privacy, personal safety, and property security may be threatened, severely endangering the cybersecurity of the smart home appliance ecosystem.
Therefore, the cybersecurity of IoT products and the protection of personal information have become the focus of attention for the state, society, enterprises, and consumers.
Cybersecurity Regulatory Framework Development
Since 2016, the state has successively issued a series of laws and regulations such as the Cybersecurity Law, Data Security Law, and Personal Information Protection Law to regulate citizens’ online behavior and protect citizens’ online rights and personal privacy. These laws and regulations provide a solid basis for the supervision of the smart home appliance industry, ensuring that the rights of participants in every link of the smart home appliance chain are traceable and legally protected.
Certification Standard Development Process
According to a relevant person in charge at the China Quality Certification Center, the center actively responds to the national strategic deployment regarding cybersecurity and information security, and has proactively collaborated with the China Household Electrical Appliances Research Institute, the Fifth Research Institute of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, JD Group, and other institutions to carry out the development and certification of IoT home appliance product cybersecurity standards. After nearly a year of research, verification, soliciting opinions, and revisions, multiple units jointly formulated the “Technical Specifications for Cybersecurity of IoT Products for Household and Similar Use Devices,” which is the certification standard for IoT home appliances, and it has now been officially released, with related work on IoT home appliance product certification also underway.
Detailed Explanation of Certification Standards
This certification standard establishes specific and quantifiable testing methods tailored to the characteristics of assets that need protection and the common threats faced by connected smart home appliances, effectively assessing the security capabilities of the products. The evaluation content includes: device network configuration and binding, authentication mechanisms, communication protection, firmware security, numerical limit management, code security, user management, access control, storage security, vulnerability remediation, and security assurance requirements.
The Importance of Certification
This certification will provide home appliance enterprises with a unified reference basis and evaluation standard, helping enterprises improve their management levels and product quality, effectively respond to cybersecurity risks, and enhance market competitiveness and brand reputation. At the same time, through quality certification measures, it can effectively assist market supervision and management agencies in assessing the cybersecurity risks of IoT home appliance products in the market, identifying products with potential risks, and providing strong consumer protection.
