Only a few years ago, our homes, offices, and commercial buildings offered basic facilities such as heating, ventilation, cooling, lighting, access control, and firefighting systems with basic provision of controls. These systems usually had a central control room, which needs continuous monitoring by service engineers throughout the day to look after all the issues passively.

With the increased threat of global warming and depleting natural resources, there is high demand for reducing the power consumption of buildings, making them self-sustainable, safe, and smart with minimum human intervention. Now, we have solar-powered buildings fitted with smart meters that monitor and optimize power consumption, hence reducing their carbon footprint and electricity bills.

Smart buildings and homes are not just limited to saving energy, but have all sorts of sophisticated automation systems that help in performing daily operations with minimal interference. Operations such as security checking and access management are taken care of by machine learning techniques, where people recognized by the system get access to their home or work. Heating, ventilation, and cooling systems are adjusted automatically using multiple sensors and external climatic conditions.

Advancement in home and building infrastructure comes with a lot of risk. We have seen in the recent past that many smart and connected homes and buildings came under cyberattack which led to chaotic situations. Slight lapses in security can result in dangerous outcomes especially in cases where the targets are hospitals, defense facilities, and government offices.

Traditionally, the building and home management systems were part of the Industrial Control System (ICS), but today's smart building and home management systems are completely different and should not be treated as the same line when we talk about security and their operation. Smart buildings are much more open and connected in comparison to ICS and IoT sensors, and gateway devices are considered as part of automation system instead of an ICS. So, it is required to have a dedicated security plan for IoT-based systems that follows industry standards and best practices.