At one point in time, BlackBerry (News - Alert) was on top of the world, and no one could have predicted the current predicament the company finds itself in. While the company has many diehard followers and plenty of enterprises and governments that still appreciate the security protocols the platform delivers, the domination of the overall market by Apple and Samsung (News - Alert) cannot be ignored.
So the new BlackBerry CEO, John Chen, has been reinforcing one of the core offerings BlackBerry delivers to its customers: security. This is an issue that is very important to enterprise customers, and one area in which the company can compete and win in. To emphasize the significance of security to the company, it announced the purchase of Secusmart (News - Alert), a German-based company specializing in anti-eavesdropping and voice encryption solutions. For businesses that use BlackBerry devices as part of their BYOD policies, this is good news, as it could strengthen the security of communications carried of VoIP and softswitch-based mobile apps.
The Secusmart technology is used by German government agencies and organizations responsible for the provision of emergency services along with governments and public authorities outside of Germany. The current line of services it offers includes the integration of highly secure voice encryption from SecuSUITE for BlackBerry 10 into the new Secure Call app.
Before the purchase, BalckBerry and Secusmart collaborated to create SecuSUITE for BlackBerry 10. This is a platform that uses a SD card designed to fit into the BlackBerry 10 smartphone allowing it to scramble all business data and communications, including VoIP calls and text messaging using 128-bit AES encryption. One of the first customers of the SD card system was a number of German government agencies and officials, including Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The continued improvement of the BlackBerry security platform reinforces the commitment the company has in this field, which is why some of the largest global public and private organizations rely on the company. This includes all G7 governments, 16 of the G20 governments, 10 out of 10 of the largest global enterprises in each of the pharmaceutical, legal and automotive industries, and the five largest oil and gas companies.
This commitment has resulted in the company receiving more security certifications than any other vendor, and is the only mobility solution to receive "Full Operational Capability" (FOC) approval to run on U.S. Department of Defense networks.
"The acquisition of Secusmart underscores our focus on addressing growing security costs and threats ranging from individual privacy to national security. This acquisition bolsters our security solutions with leading voice and data encryption and anti-eavesdropping technologies, and furthers BlackBerry’s security leadership in end-to-end mobile solutions," said John Chen, Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry.
Details of the transaction have not been revealed pending regulatory approvals.
Edited by Alisen Downey