Can this library help me if I have existing sensors I'd like to connect to securely? E.g. could I somehow proxy their requests to our remote backend via some local application?
That's an awesome question! Yes, any arbitrary protocol can be tunneled through an Ockam SecureChannel. So if you have a device that produces readings as some binary structure or JSON or some other encoding ... a secure channel can deliver that data end-to-end protected to your backend application. You can even tunnel high-level protocols through a secure channel, we recently tried tunneling SSH through Ockam to create secure remote access to a machine that is behind a NAT .. and it worked like a charm.
To make this simple and transparent, we're building a feature called Transport Inlets & Outlets. With that you can easy create a proxy (either on the same device if it has an OS or in a nearby device) without modifying your original device application - the code of your sensor. There is an open PR on TCP Inlets & Outlets (portals), if you're interested: https://github.com/ockam-network/ockam/pull/1756
To make this simple and transparent, we're building a feature called Transport Inlets & Outlets. With that you can easy create a proxy (either on the same device if it has an OS or in a nearby device) without modifying your original device application - the code of your sensor. There is an open PR on TCP Inlets & Outlets (portals), if you're interested: https://github.com/ockam-network/ockam/pull/1756