The IT Nerd

There’s some positive news for troubled smartphone maker BlackBerry. Two government agencies have either deployed or approved BlackBerry solutions.

• BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 and BlackBerry 10 smartphones have been the first to be approved by NATO for classified communications up to the level of Restricted. The certification allows agencies in NATO countries in all 28 member states across North America and Europe to use BlackBerry 10 smartphones in the office or in the field. The NATO certification is a significant milestone for BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10. It provides assurance to security-conscious organizations, including government agencies, companies in regulated industries and other organizations dealing with sensitive information, that data handled by BlackBerry 10 smartphones is strongly secured and encrypted. BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 integrates end-to-end security, and uses AES 256-bit, the highest encryption level of the standard, for data at rest and data in transit.
• Next up is the National Police of Colombia who are upgrading their BlackBerry smartphones and migrating to BlackBerry’s newest Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution, BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10. The National Police of Colombia selected the BlackBerry solution for its embedded controls that support regulatory compliance in government environments with the highest security requirements.
• SecuSUITE for BlackBerry 10  by Secusmart GmbH (www.secusmart.com) received preliminary approval for secure voice and data communication from the BSI for use with the German VS-NfD classification (for official use only). Immediately after preliminary approval was granted, Secusmart began to build up the infrastructure of the system for secure voice and secure data transmission. A few days after the launch eleven out of thirteen German government ministries have chosen SecuSUITE for BlackBerry 10. In total, twenty-three governmental organizations have procured SecuSUITE for BlackBerry 10 (> 1,200 orders). Preliminary approval of SecuSUITE for BlackBerry 10 has currently been granted for the BlackBerry Z10 touch-screen smartphone and the BlackBerry Q10 smartphone with its QWERTY keyboard. Also the new BlackBerry® Z30 smartphone will also be supported in the SecuSUITE for BlackBerry 10 solution.

Clearly government and security types haven’t dumped BlackBerry yet. That’s good news as the company continues to reinvent itself.

This entry was posted on October 1, 2013 at 10:39 am and is filed under Commentary with tags BlackBerry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.