Twilio Partners with Microsoft Azure IoT, Adds Identity and Authentication Capabilities to its IoT Connectivity Offering

IoT solutions often ignore identity and authentication best practices
due to cost and complexity, introducing security risks

Trust Onboard reduces complexity around identification and
authentication for makers of cellular IoT devices

Announces integration with Microsoft Azure IoT enabling developers to
automatically authenticate devices to Azure’s IoT cloud platform

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Twilio
(NYSE: TWLO), the leading cloud communications platform, today announced Trust
Onboard, a feature for its IoT SIMs that enables developers to
identify and authenticate cellular connected devices against cloud
services. Twilio launched Programmable Wireless in April 2018, and has
shipped more than a million SIMs that provide global connectivity to IoT
developers. With Trust Onboard, Twilio now delivers connectivity, device
identification and authentication capabilities on a single SIM,
dramatically accelerating IoT time to market. At Microsoft Build, Twilio
also announced integration with Azure IoT as part of Microsoft’s IoT
Plug and Play connectivity, allowing IoT developers to sync devices
to their Azure cloud from the Twilio Console, establishing trust as soon
as the device comes online.

“Cellular IoT developers are burdened with two major challenges,” said
Evan Cummack, head of IoT & Wireless at Twilio. “First, developers need
to reliably connect large fleets of devices to cellular networks of
different types around the world. Twilio’s IoT SIMs and Wireless
Supernetwork tackle this problem. Then developers need a simple, secure
mechanism to exchange data with their devices. Trust Onboard is our
first product that helps developers bridge this gap — it’s a
frictionless way to deploy a large fleet of devices, identify and
authenticate each one to the cloud.”

As IoT device fleets get larger and time to market becomes more
critical, identity management is increasingly painful for IoT
developers, who have often had to invest significant time and resources
figuring out how to securely pre-install unique identity credentials
during manufacturing. Having Trust Onboard certificates pre-embedded on
each SIM reduces the time it takes to get an IoT solution to market
while adhering to best practices.

Trust Onboard

Trust Onboard provides a unique identity to an IoT device via preloaded
X.509 certificates, enabling a developer to authenticate against any
cloud service. With Trust Onboard, developers can:

• Establish a trusted identity for each device
  — with unique X.509 certificates on each SIM, developers don’t need to
  worry about generating or distributing their own certificates.
• Authenticate against any cloud or backend service
  — dual certificates give developers the option to perform
  authentication in their own device code, or delegate it to the
  cryptographic hardware of the SIM itself.
• Remove complexity from the manufacturing process
  — developers can optimize their supply chain and reduce time to market
  by using one vendor for connectivity and identity management.

Twilio’s Cellular IoT platform and Microsoft Azure IoT Hub

With Trust Onboard, Twilio provides a simple user interface for an IoT
developer to order SIMs — including embedded SIMs — with two day
shipping. After ordering, they can now associate SIMs with their
Microsoft Azure account so that each device can be identified and
trusted by Microsoft Azure IoT Hub the first time it comes online.

“Securely connecting large volumes of cellular connected IoT devices to
cloud based solutions is still too difficult for customers,” says Sam
George, director, Azure IoT at Microsoft Corp. “With Twilio Programmable
Wireless with Trust Onboard and the integration with Azure IoT that
we’ve done, our joint customers have a great solution to this challenge.
This joint solution means the whole process enables zero touch
provisioning for customers, so that non-experts will be able to turn
devices on wherever they are in the world and they will automatically
show up in their Azure IoT Applications and be fully operational. That
is a huge customer benefit and supports our drive to simplify IoT.”

Twilio at Microsoft Build

The Twilio IoT team will be hosting daily workshops at Microsoft Build
on May 6–8 in Seattle. Join Twilio in the IoT Hackspace and complete a
TwilioQuest experience to receive an exclusive Twilio Broadband IoT
Developer Kit that comes with a Programmable Wireless SIM with Trust
Onboard for Azure IoT.

Pricing and Availability

Twilio Programmable Wireless SIMs equipped with Trust Onboard are
available for pre-order here
and will be generally available in July for a one-time fee of $5 per SIM
– this includes everything required to get connected.

After purchasing the SIM for a one-time fee, customers pay a monthly
recurring SIM fee in addition to usage-based data charges. Twilio also
gives customers the option of a lower data rate after committing to a
minimum data spend per month.

About Twilio

Millions of developers around the world have used Twilio to unlock the
magic of communications to improve any human experience. Twilio has
democratized communications channels like voice, text, chat, video and
email by virtualizing the world’s communications infrastructure through
APIs that are simple enough for any developer to use, yet robust enough
to power the world’s most demanding applications. By making
communications a part of every software developer’s toolkit, Twilio is
enabling innovators across every industry — from emerging leaders to the
world’s largest organizations — to reinvent how companies engage with
their customers.

Contacts

Caitlin Epstein
press@twilio.com