IAR Systems and its Secure Thingz subsidiary in Sweden have announced the launch of a secure development and volume production platform to simplify Microsoft Azure IoT migration.

The purpose is to enable high-volume secure device development and production, as well as to support seamless device onboarding and interaction with Microsoft Azure cloud services.

As applications rapidly shift from traditional embedded devices to cloud-oriented edge compute nodes, there is an increasing need to integrate cloud connectivity into both the development and manufacturing processes, resulting in a seamless and secure supply chain.

This product takes advantage of popular commercial embedded development toolchains to combine cloud-ready identification and strong root-of-trust technologies, resulting in a cloud-first offering.

The combination of the IAR Embedded Workbench development toolchain and the Embedded Trust security development tool, combined with Microsoft’s cloud device provisioning services, ensures that enterprises can deliver cryptographically identifiable products with secure software installation, secure update management, and secure production management.

Development-oriented security may ensure that bad actors have no access points into the development-to-deployment flow, protecting intellectual property, preventing malware, and delivering trust in every connected device.

“It is only by designing for security and cloud connectivity at the inception of the development process that we can truly ensure the protection of devices, intellectual property, customer data, and software updates,” said Haydn Povey, chief strategy officer at IAR Systems. “Secure development and secure manufacturing of devices, coupled with tight integration of strong cryptographic identity and valet services to ensure OEM credentials have meshed securely into Microsoft’s Azure services, mean that cloud-first strategies are available to every developer and enterprise.”

Tony Shakib, general manager for Azure IoT at Microsoft, added: “Building with Microsoft Azure RTOS and being cloud-ready delivers the Microsoft vision for connected devices. The ability to develop and deploy pre-onboarded devices which implicitly clouds aware means everyone can rapidly connect devices to services and reduce time-to-data.”

Secure Thingz is a device security, embedded systems, and lifecycle management domain, expert. IAR Systems purchased the company in 2018. Secure Thingz is dedicated to bringing security to developing industrial IoT, critical infrastructure, automotive, and other markets. The Secure Deploy architecture was created to address the primary security issues associated with IoT. It ensures a low-cost root of trust in low-cost microcontrollers to supply a core set of important services across the product lifecycle, in addition to secure deployment, production, and update infrastructure.