While computer and mobile phones still seem to be at the center of our digital lives in 2016, Microsoft is already working to lead the shift to the next big computing platforms, including the Internet of Things. Earlier this year, the company introduced the Azure IoT Hub, a platform that provides an easy way to connect, monitor, and manage millions of IoT devices.
Azure IoT Hub already enable secure communications from device to cloud and cloud to device over open protocols that are already widely used in IoT, but the company has announced this week on the Azure blog that the platform will now support X.509 certificates to enhance device-level authentication:
With Azure IoT support for X.509 certificates, an IoT device can now store a private key locally, and an associated device X.509 certificate generated to identify the device to Azure IoT Hub before the information is transmitted. The benefit to customers in industries such as manufacturing, healthcare and smart cities is that device identity can be transmitted safely and securely from the edge to the cloud while maintaining integrity.
If you want to get more technical details about how to use X.509 certificates to authenticate a device with IoT Hub, Microsoft has published a detailed article that you can read over here. If you’re already using the Azure IoT Hub, let us know in the comments if this new feature will be helpful to secure your IoT deployment.
