BACnet Interest Group re-elects Nils-Gunnar Fritz to the Board of Directors

New BIG-EU Executive Board focuses on BACnet/SC in building automation

The member companies of the BACnet Interest Group (BIG-EU) elected a new board in September 2020 as scheduled. It consists of Thomas Kurowski (Deputy Chairman, Siemens Schweiz AG), Frank Schubert (Treasurer, Beckhoff Automation GmbH & Co. KG), Nils-Gunnar Fritz (MBS GmbH) and Willem van der Werf (Honeywell). Karl-Heinz Belser (Johnson Controls Systems & Service GmbH), who has been active in the organization since its foundation in 1998, was appointed Chairman.

Meeting increased demands on the GA

The objectives of the new management committee are based on the BIG-EU's statutory mission to further disseminate the manufacturer-independent communication protocol in Europe. The main focus here is on IT security: "The BACnet Secure Connect (BACnet/SC) technology was developed last year to protect the open communication standard against cybercriminal attacks with comparatively little effort," says Nils-Gunnar Fritz, Managing Director of MBS GmbH in Krefeld. "MBS, as one of the pioneers in this field, has been offering Secure Connect products since the spring. MBS and Delta Controls are also inviting manufacturers to the virtual plugfest with BACnet/SC," he adds. The shared network for testing with Secure Connect is permanently available to device developers free of charge.

GA has become a multi-layered task, and the IT security strategies of the EU and the national state governments further increase the responsibility of building managers