At the Cybersecurity Pavilion at PLASA 2026, around thirty manufacturers presented a new, secure, free and already operational protocol, preparing the industry for the December 2027 deadline. Wayne Howell and Chris Kennedy (ChamSys) introduce it in our video and demonstrate how it is already being used.
The countdown has begun for entertainment lighting. The European Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) will come fully into force on 11 December 2027, giving the industry 14 months to comply. According to Wayne Howell, most lighting products using protocols such as sACN or Art-Net will then no longer be compliant, and will therefore no longer be legal to use. This prompted the creation of Sig-Net, a protocol designed in response to this legislation.
Wayne Howell is the managing director of Singularity. He worked at Avolites before founding Artistic Licence, which he ran for around thirty years until its acquisition by Robe. He is the inventor of Art-Net and co-inventor of RDM.
He is now one of the driving forces behind Sig-Net, the secure protocol developed in response to the Cyber Resilience Act.
A collaborative project
Sig-Net is a project conceived by a group of around 30 manufacturers and two industry organisations: PLASA and the Alliance. The stand demonstrates the result: products from different brands communicate using Sig-Net and interoperate with one another.
What changes for users: onboarding
The main workflow change is called onboarding. Until now, a moving head could be taken out of its box, plugged in and communicate with the console. Once the CRA applies, it will do nothing until the secure onboarding procedure has been completed. This step has been designed to be simple: “It can be done, for example, by scanning QR codes,” explains Wayne Howell. Once a fixture has been configured with a particular console, the two will remain securely paired until the end of the tour.
A firmware update for most products
Brands that were not involved from the outset can still adopt the protocol. For most products, this will simply require a firmware update. Of the thirty or so companies developing this new protocol, around a dozen already have a complete implementation in their products.
Already available and free to use
According to Wayne Howell, Sig-Net is “already ready”: the documentation continues to receive minor improvements, but the technical work is complete. Like Art-Net, this protocol is entirely free to use.
Chris Kennedy also gave a live demonstration with several devices in the video. He explains: “A dozen manufacturers, also represented on this stand, have already implemented Sig-Net, and it all works together.”
Chris Kennedy is one of the founders of ChamSys, now part of the Chauvet Group. ChamSys was one of the first companies to implement Art-Net more than 20 years ago, and Chris Kennedy has collaborated with Wayne Howell for many years.
Over the past six months, they have worked closely together on the Sig-Net protocol, which he demonstrated on ChamSys consoles at PLASA 2026.
Full information, documentation and a wide range of resources are available at sig-net.net
