Now, with the Azure Sphere OS 20.07 release, Microsoft has licensed and exposed a subset of wolfSSL, the first commercial implementation of TLS 1.3, for use on Azure Sphere devices. This strategic pairing allows software developers to create client TLS connections directly using the Azure Sphere SDK. Software developers no longer need to package their own TLS library for this purpose. Utilizing the best-tested, high-performance wolfSSL TLS support in Azure Sphere can save device memory space and programming effort, freeing developers to build new, cutting-edge IoT solutions.
Microsoft Azure Sphere and wolfSSL have been long-time partners, striving for the very best in security. The Azure Sphere OS has long used wolfSSL for TLS connections to Microsoft Azure services. Azure Sphere also uses wolfSSL’s versatile technology to enable secure interactions from developer apps to customer-owned services.
Partnerships with embedded security leaders like wolfSSL play an important role in Azure Sphere’s mission to empower every organization to connect, create, and deploy highly secured IoT devices. The unique Azure Sphere approach to security is based on years of vulnerability research, the findings of which Microsoft published in the seminal paper “Seven Properties of Highly Secure Devices.” These seven properties are the minimum requirement for any connected device to be considered highly secured. Azure Sphere implements all seven properties, providing a robust foundation for IoT devices. This level of consideration is not lost on an engineering team like wolfSSL’s, known for producing the best-tested crypto on the market and consistently supporting the latest developments in TLS protocol, like TLS 1.3.
Azure Sphere can be used with any customer cloud service, not just Microsoft’s own Azure. By providing a highly secured ecosystem, Microsoft and wolfSSL make security features more accessible and easier to use and can extend unmatched security to new frontiers in IoT where security has historically been sparse.
For information on how to use these wolfSSL APIs on Azure Sphere, please reference the Azure Sphere documentation on wolfSSL. We will be publishing a sample to go along with this, available at a later date. Check back here—we will update this post with the link to the sample once it is available.
If you have any questions, contact Microsoft at AzCommunity@microsoft.com or wolfSSL at facts@wolfSSL.com.