Microsoft Bolsters Easier IoT To Cloud Data Security With Industry Partners

Thales and Telstra are working with Microsoft and Arduino to pave the way for scalable security for connected IoT devices, by deploying a system that enables trusted and secure end-to-end communications between devices and the cloud.The technology enables instant and standardised mutual authentication between a device and a cloud platform via cellular networks, while fully-complying with GSMA IoT SAFE security specifications. Microsoft has integrated the IoT SAFE solution within its Azure IoT Hub and has also provided Azure Stream Analytics, the Cosmos DB and Power BI services to quickly enable the development of safe end-to-end IoT applications.Within the IoT ecosystem, billions of devices collect, process and send data to the cloud, where a range of different IoT services are executed. To enable security, the IoT cloud service must have absolute trust in data received from connected devices. Equally, devices need to trust the cloud.This is only possible if the device and server are mutually authenticated. However, the new partners said that the IoT devices market is so fragmented – with a patchwork of different operating systems and chips being utilised – that security services scalability and duplication are “very limited”.