Azure Sphere, Microsoft’s integrated security solution for IoT devices and equipment is now generally available, the company announced this week.
This comes nearly two years since the solution was released in public preview in April 2018. In November, Microsoft teased the February general availability of the cloud security solution for IoT devices as the number of connected devices is expected to hit 20 billion this year.
“From its inception in Microsoft Research to general availability today, Azure Sphere is Microsoft’s answer to these escalating IoT threats,” said Ann Johnson, the company’s corporate vice president of cybersecurity solutions, in a blog post.
“Azure Sphere delivers quick and cost-effective device security for OEMs and organizations to protect the products they sell and the critical equipment that they rely on to drive new business value.”
The blog post featured a Q&A with Galent Hunt, a distinguished engineer and managing director of Azure Sphere, who said there are three technical components to the cybersecurity product:
The first of the three technical components is the certified chips that are built by our silicon partners, they have the hardware root of trust that Microsoft created. These are chips that provide a foundation of security, starting in the silicon itself, and provide connectivity and compute power for these devices.
The second technical component … is the Azure Sphere operating system. This runs on the chips and creates a secure software environment.
The third technical component is the cloud-based Azure Sphere security service. The security service connects with every single Azure Sphere chip, with every single Azure Sphere operating system, and works with the operating system and the chip to keep the device secured throughout its lifetime.
A fourth component are Microsoft’s cybersecurity experts who are monitoring Azure Sphere devices, Hunt said.
“As we identify new types of attacks and new emerging security vulnerabilities, we will upgrade our operating system and the cloud services to mitigate against those new kinds of attacks,” Hunt said.
“Then we will deploy updates to every Azure Sphere-based device, globally. So, we’re providing ongoing support, and ongoing security improvements for those devices.”
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