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Amidst the fast-changing landscape of the Internet of Things (IoT), the world’s fastest growing open source platform Node.js launched a major update that will enhance its security, reliability and performance for IoT-related solutions.

News of the update came from the Node.js Foundation, an industry-backed, community-led consortium that developed the open source platform. It announced the release of version 6 of Node.js, a universal platform that is used for IoT, microservice architectures, mobile, web applications and enterprise application development.

Currently Node.js has 3.5 million users and is posting an annual growth rate of 100% – the fasted growing open source platform in the world. The consortium says Node.js is the only unified platform that can be used by full stack JavaScript developers for IoT, mobile, back end and front end projects.

“The Node.js Project has done an incredible job of bringing this version to life in the timeline that we initially proposed in September 2015. It’s important for us to continue to deliver new versions of Node.js equipped with all the cutting-edge JavaScript features to serve the needs of developers and to continue to improve the performance and stability enterprises rely on,” said Node.js Foundation community manager Mikeal Rogers. “This release is committed to Long Term Support, which allows predictable long-term stability, reliability, performance and security to the growing number of enterprise users that are adopting Node.js as a key technology in their infrastructure.”

The Foundation’s diverse member base includes such companies as: Google, SAP, GoDaddy, Fidelity, Groupon, Yahoo! and NodeSource.

A key upgrade with the latest Node.js version (Node.js v6) is its enhanced performance — four times faster than version 4 — which will significantly cut startup time for large applications.  As well, the latest Node.js version will come equipped with v8 JavaScript engine 5.0, which features improved support for ECMAScript 2015.

Meanwhile, security received upgrading as well, with several new features that make it easier to write secure code for Node.js V6. Its new Buffer API helps cut the risk of vulnerabilities and bugs filtering into applications through a new constructor method for creating Buffer instances. And other enhancements allow developers to use older modules safely that have not been updated for use with the new constructor.

Lastly, reliability has been boosted by a focus on increased testing and documentation for Node.js v6, which assists companies that are currently using the platform or are exploring the possibility in the future.