Who Created and Maintains the Digital Standard? Who can Contribute?

The development of the standard was led by Consumer Reports, Disconnect, Ranking Digital Rights, Aspiration, and the Cyber Independent Testing Lab. Each of these groups applied their experience creating rigorous testing and ranking systems to imagining how to evaluate the huge range of newly emerging IoT devices, which can include everything from door locks, to garden sprinklers, to televisions, to kitchen appliances. The standard also seeks to include expertise from contributors outside of the founding organizations. The open source standard text is posted on GitHub and is open for comments, additions, and revisions from any member of the tech community—researchers, developers, advocates, and hobbyists.

The criteria contained in the standard are rooted in the principles that "electronics and software-based products should be secure, consumer information should be kept private, ownership rights of consumers should be maintained, and products should be designed to combat harassment and help protect freedom of expression."

These principles serve to frame testing of digital products around security and privacy protections for the humans using a product. The Digital Standard is designed to make sure that sensitive data is handled properly, rather than a more limited testing framework that may focus only on functionality or durability. By expanding product testing to include the indicators contained in the Digital Standard, consumers can learn not only "will this product actually cook dinner?" or "will this product last?" but also "can this product be easily hacked?" or "will this product leak sensitive data?"