We announced the general availability of Azure Security Center for IoT in July 2019. Since then, we have seen a lot of interest from both our customers and partners. Our team has been working on enhancing the capabilities we offer our customers to secure their IoT solutions. As our team gets ready to attend the RSA conference next week, we are sharing the new capabilities we have in Azure Security Center for IoT.

As organizations pursue digital transformation by connecting vital equipment or creating new connected products, IoT deployments will get bigger and more common. In fact, the International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts that IoT will continue to grow at double-digit rates until IoT spending surpasses $1 trillion in 2022. As these IoT deployments come online, newly connected devices will expand the attack surface available to attackers, creating opportunities to target the valuable data generated by IoT. Organizations are challenged with securing their IoT deployments end-to-end from the devices to applications and data, also including the connections between the two.

Why Azure Security Center for IoT?

Azure Security Center for IoT provides threat protection and security posture management designed for securing entire IoT deployments, including Microsoft and 3rd party devices. Azure Security Center for IoT is the first IoT security service from a major cloud provider that enables organizations to prevent, detect, and help remediate potential attacks on all the different components that make up an IoT deployment—from small sensors, to edge computing devices and gateways, to Azure IoT Hub, and on to the compute, storage, databases, and AI or machine learning workloads that organizations connect to their IoT deployments. This end-to-end protection is vital to secure IoT deployments.

Added support for Azure RTOS operating system

Azure RTOS is a comprehensive suite of real-time operating systems (RTOS) and libraries for developing embedded real-time IoT applications on multi control unit (MCU) devices. It includes Azure RTOS ThreadX, a leading RTOS with the off-the-shelf support for most leading chip architectures and embedded development tools. Azure Security Center for IoT extends support for Azure RTOS operating system in addition to Linux (Ubuntu, Debian) and Windows 10 IoT core operating systems. Azure RTOS will be shipped with a built-in security module that will cover common threats on real-time operating system devices. The offering includes detection of malicious network activities, device behavior baselining based on custom alerts, and recommendations that will help to improve the security hygiene of the device.

New Azure Sentinel connector

As information technology, operational technology, and the Internet of Things converge, customers are faced with rising threats.

Azure Security Center for IoT announces the availability of an Azure Sentinel connector that provides onboarding of IoT data workloads into Sentinel from Azure IoT Hub-managed deployments. This integration provides investigation capabilities on IoT assets from Azure Sentinel allowing security pros to combine IoT security data with data from across the organization for artificial intelligence or advanced analysis. With Azure Sentinel connector you can now monitor alerts across all your IoT Hub deployments, act upon potential risks, inspect and triage your IoT Incidents, and run investigations to track attacker’s lateral movement within your network.

With this new announcement, Azure Sentinel is the first security information and event management (SIEM) with native IoT support, allowing SecOps and analysts to identify threats in the complex converged networks.

Microsoft Intelligent Security Association partnership program for IoT security vendors

Through partnering with members of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association, Microsoft is able to leverage a vast knowledge pool to defend against a world of increasing IoT threats in enterprise, healthcare, manufacturing, energy, building management systems, transportation, smart cities, smart homes, and more. Azure Security Center for IoT’s simple onboarding flow connects solutions, like Attivo Networks, CyberMDX, CyberX, Firedome, and SecuriThings—enabling you to protect your managed and unmanaged IoT devices, view all security alerts, reduce your attack surface with security posture recommendations, and run unified reports in a single pane of glass.

For more information on the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association partnership program for IoT security vendors check out our tech community blog.

Availability on government regions

Starting on March 1, 2020, Azure Security Center for IoT will be available on USGov Virginia and USGov Arizona regions.

Organizations can monitor their entire IoT solution, stay ahead of evolving threats, and fix configuration issues before they become threats. When combined with Microsoft’s secure-by-design devices, services, and the expertise we share with you and your partners, Azure Security Center for IoT provides an important way to reduce the risk of IoT while achieving your business goals.

To learn more about Azure Security Center for IoT please visit our documentation page. To learn more about our new partnerships please visit the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association page. Upgrade to Azure Security Center Standard to benefit from IoT security.