Security software and hardware company Sophos has added a feature to its latest mobility management product Mobile 7 that will enable organizations to manage low-cost Android Things and Windows 10 IoT devices.
The company said that the new Internet of Things (IoT) functionality would provide basic management features to businesses that are designing and deploying IoT initiatives at scale using devices that use either Google’s Android Things operating system (OS), or Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system. This includes management tasks such as applying policies, checking online device statuses, monitoring battery levels, or confirming or updating firmware.
Sophos said that the software would form a communication and management framework that could be built into industrial and commercial IoT initiatives such as point-of-sale (POS) in retail and connected classrooms.
The security company will be added to the increasing list of vendors that are putting faith in Google’s IoT operating system.
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When Android Things launched back in December 2016, Google announced a number of hardware partners including Intel Edison, NXP Pico and the Raspberry Pi 3. Chip-maker Qualcomm has since announced that its Snapdragon 210 chip will also support the operating system, becoming the first processor with built-in LTE to do so.
With its IoT OS, Google is aiming to ensure developers can push out OS patches, security fixes and any of their own updates in their own schedule, ensuring that the OS remains secure.
IoT security has come under a lot of scrutiny over the past year, so operating system developers like Google and Microsoft will be keen to ensure that devices based on their OS can be as secure as possible from a software perspective. Sophos is aiming to add an additional layer of management and security capabilities on top of this.
But Sophos faces fierce competition as seemingly all software vendors want a piece of the IoT management area, from huge companies like Amazon Web Services with its IoT platform to start-ups like DevicePilot.
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