IRVINE, CA - Kelley Blue Book and RouteOne joined the founding members of Open Secure Access, Inc. (OSA): Autobytel Inc., AutoTrader.com, CARFAX, cars.com, The Cobalt Group, DealerTrack, and JMsolutions on the OSA Steering Committee.

OSA was formed to help develop data security protocols and to promote innovation and dealer profitability via efficient access to dealer-owned and dealer-permissioned data.

"Because of Kelley Blue Book's relationship with more than 10,000 dealers across the country and because our information and management tools are integral to the dealer's processes, the need for secure access to dealer management systems has become a shared priority," said Paul Johnson, president of Kelley Blue Book and kbb.com.

OSA has been working with DMS providers to implement the five key OSA principles:

• Dealers should control who is allowed to have access to their data.
  

  
  

• The connection between retail automotive systems should be secure and the privacy of data protected.
  

  
  

• Third parties that have dealer permission to access DMS data should either be able to access the data through their own efforts or through the services of a company providing data extraction or integration services.
  

  
  

• Once a third party is generally authorized to access dealer data by a DMS provider, then, given individual dealer permission, the process of setting up that dealer and accessing the data should be administratively and procedurally simple.
  

  
  

• Third parties should have read/write access to all of the data available to a DMS user either through a robust set of APIs, system functionality, or direct access to the database.