After announcing a $5 billion investment in IoT over the next four years earlier this month, Microsoft introduced a new solution for securing IoT devices at the RSA conference yesterday. Called Azure Sphere, the new offering has been designed as a highly-secured end-to-end solution for the billion IoT devices deployed every year worldwide
Azure Sphere is built on three different components: custom-designed micro controllers (MCU), the Linux-based Azure Sphere OS and a cloud service that can detect security threats in real time. As the Azure team explained yesterday, the project all started back in 2015 when a small team within Microsoft Research “identified the critical need for hardware, software, and cloud to work together to secure a device.”
The project leverages various Microsoft innovations, with the Azure Sphere certified MCUs using custom silicon security technology coming straight from Microsoft’s previous rwork on Xbox consoles. Additionally, the Azure team said that the Linux-based Azure Sphere OS uses “security innovations pioneered in Windows.”
Azure Sphere OS is currently in private preview, with dev kits to available mid-2018. Microsoft expects the first Azure Sphere devices to be available by the end of the year, but in the meantime you can learn more about the IoT solution on the Azure Sphere website.
