Just a decade ago, it was perhaps hard to imagine how digital and connected many of our home features would become. From thermostats to speakers to refrigerators that can all be controlled by voice commands or from a phone, many homes today are “smart homes”, relying on connected devices that enable access practical, even when we are not physically inside our residence.
Smart home market revenue is expected to reach $115.70 billion this year and is expected to grow by 13.97% through 2026 with an expected market volume of $195.20 billion in three years. The number of active households is expected to reach 573.7 million users by 2026. Household penetration will be 14.2% in 2022 and is expected to reach 25.0% by 2026.
Clearly, smart homes are here to stay and the market still has a lot of growth to achieve. But with so many manufacturers and devices to choose from, the smart home landscape is often a hodgepodge of support and usability. It’s confusing which product works with others. Compatible options may be limited, depending on the manufacturer you choose. And, no matter what devices consumers choose, they only have a small fraction of compatible devices that work with their platform of choice. Simply put, until now the lack of a unifying standard among the various smart home technology standards has made it complicated and difficult to use devices together.
Enter Matter, a smart home standard and common language for smart home devices to communicate. Matter’s goal is to simplify the market and enable smart home devices to work together across all platforms. This new standard was developed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (Alliance) and will allow consumers to simplify their connected home and manage everything from a single voice assistant of their choice.
Matter is a new standard with global implications and brings the connected device industry together. Some of the best-known names in smart home technology, including Google, Apple, Amazon and Samsung, all agree with Matter, which is poised to be a win for consumers and manufacturers in the industry.
What manufacturers need to comply with Matter
Manufacturers of connected devices don’t want to wait to become compliant with Matter. Manufacturers of compliant devices can put the Matter logo on their devices so customers can trust it to connect seamlessly and securely to their favorite products. It will undoubtedly become the standard that consumers look for when buying connected home devices, so ensuring your device offerings are now compliant is key.
Matter raises the bar for device security by requiring a handful of best practices. It provides a foundation for better security in several ways, including validation of each device, strong device identity to maintain trust, secure communications, secure software updates, and software integrity verification . To do this, Matter will rely on a public key infrastructure (PKI), a long-standing standard for ensuring digital trust. Matter devices will have a unique ID and will work with certificates that verify device type and brand. The certificate data will be stored on a secure enclave, which is a protected and secure chip. Matter-certified devices will also secure communications by leveraging encryption.
Working with members of the Connectivity Standards Alliance over the past three years, DigiCert has helped develop the Device Attestation aspect of the Matter protocol that leverages PKI to ensure identity and trust. The foundation of interoperability and trust for the Matter protocol is based on shared roots of trust, or Product Attestation Authorities (PAAs) that are created and securely managed by the appropriate parties. Once these trusted PAAs are established, Product Attestation Intermediates (PAIs) are created that inherit the trust from the root.
Every compliant member of Matter is required to have an IAP signed by the AIP. From these intermediaries, Device Attestation Certificates (DACs) are created, one for each device. These certificates also inherit the trust of the root and the intermediary. Managing this certificate infrastructure requires robust automation, provisioning, traceability, and reporting capabilities. A certificate management platform can help master this complex process.
Having the right tools in place to achieve Matter compliance means manufacturers can focus on what they do best: building smart devices. Working with the right partners to deploy scalable PKI products and services can accelerate your time to market and achieve compliance that will position your business and products as ready for the smart home market of the future.
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