The Z-Wave Alliance, a global membership organization dedicated to advancing the Z-Wave wireless smart home protocol, hosted members in the Z-Wave Pavilion at ISC West for the second year in row. Z-Wave recently announced that it has become the first smart home mesh network to receive UL recognition for household burglar alarms for its family of 500 series modules in addition to a suite of upgrades to its encryption and security layer.

UL Certification

Announced earlier this year, Z-Wave modules ZM5101, ZM5202 and ZM5304 with protocol SDK version 6.6 have received UL component recognition for home security, making Z-Wave the first mesh technology awarded a certificate of compliance by UL for use in professional alarm systems. With Z-Wave technology already included in more than 90 percent of the panels provided by professional security companies in the U.S., all smart home devices with the new Z-Wave SDK version 6.60 that are based on the UL component recognition can be united via Z-Wave technology and leverage for both professional security and smart home services.

As a true, two-way network technology with jamming detection, Z-Wave implementation into professional alarm installations will help reduce false alarms, currently the No. 1 problem faced by security companies, and by operating in the 900 MHz band, Z-Wave devices are safe from intentional or unintentional “jamming” common in the overcrowded 2.4GHz band.  

S2 Framework

The Z-Wave Security 2 (S2) framework, available in the 6.7 software development kit from chipmaker Sigma Designs will provide advanced security for smart home devices and controllers, gateways and hubs. Z-Wave removes the vulnerability of the network during inclusion by requiring a QR code or a pin-code on the device itself. With S2, attacks such as man in the middle and brute force are rendered powerless by the implementation of industry-wide accepted secure key exchange using Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman. For Z-Wave manufacturers with IoT Cloud solutions and Z-Wave connection to the other IP devices, the Z/IP Gateway enables tunnelling all Z/IP traffic through a secure TLS 1.1 tunnel, eliminating cloud vulnerability.

“Z-Wave has long enjoyed a strong market position in the home security industry, with partners like ADT, Vivint and Nortek Security & Control at the forefront of deploying smart home security systems,” said Mitchell Klein, executive director of the Z-Wave Alliance. “We want manufacturers and security dealers alike to know that Z-Wave takes safety and security incredibly seriously. We will continue to be the gold standard platform for this industry while always delivering new features and benefits.”

Z-Wave products are available through distributors and direct to consumers in retail and online, including www.z-wave.com. Z-Wave is fully interoperable between all brands and is fully backward-compatible between versions.  

For information on the Z-Wave Alliance, visit www.z-wavealliance.org.