diff --git a/HISTORY.rst b/HISTORY.rst
index 02af67d..eef9acd 100644
--- a/HISTORY.rst
+++ b/HISTORY.rst
@@ -2,6 +2,10 @@
 
 Release History
 ===============
+0.0.9 (2017-05-09)
+------------------
+* Enforce basic SSL utilization to ensure performance due to `GitHub issue 625 <https://github.com/pyca/pyopenssl/issues/625>`
+
 0.0.8 (2017-04-26)
 ------------------
 * Fix server-side throttling retry support. This is not a guarantee that if the server is throttling the upload (or download) it will eventually succeed, but there is now a back-off retry in place to make it more likely.
diff --git a/azure/datalake/store/__init__.py b/azure/datalake/store/__init__.py
index 495438f..4298576 100644
--- a/azure/datalake/store/__init__.py
+++ b/azure/datalake/store/__init__.py
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
 # license information.
 # --------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
-__version__ = "0.0.8"
+__version__ = "0.0.9"
 
 from .core import AzureDLFileSystem
 from .multithread import ADLDownloader
diff --git a/azure/datalake/store/lib.py b/azure/datalake/store/lib.py
index 81a29ea..de5e1cc 100644
--- a/azure/datalake/store/lib.py
+++ b/azure/datalake/store/lib.py
@@ -25,6 +25,21 @@
 import requests
 import requests.exceptions
 
+# this is required due to github issue, to ensure we don't lose perf from openPySSL: https://github.com/pyca/pyopenssl/issues/625
+enforce_no_py_open_ssl = None
+try:
+    from requests.packages.urllib3.contrib.pyopenssl import extract_from_urllib3 as enforce_no_py_open_ssl
+except ImportError:
+    # in the case of debian/ubuntu system packages, the import is slightly different
+    try:
+        from urllib3.contrib.pyopenssl import extract_from_urllib3 as enforce_no_py_open_ssl
+    except ImportError:
+        # if OpenSSL is unavailable in both cases then there is no need to "undo" it.
+        pass
+
+if enforce_no_py_open_ssl:
+    enforce_no_py_open_ssl()
+
 from msrest.authentication import Authentication
 from .exceptions import DatalakeBadOffsetException, DatalakeRESTException
 from .exceptions import FileNotFoundError, PermissionError