BlackBerry Increases Encryption, Anti-Eavesdropping Capabilities

BlackBerry Limited, is apparently ending 2014 in a good note with the announcement that BES12™: a cross-platform EMM solution includes support for Android 5.0 Lollipop.

BES12 support for Android Lollipop was made available to customers in early November.

The capability underscores BlackBerry’s commitment to unparalleled security in managing devices from multiple platforms in the enterprise, and further demonstrates the breadth of BES12 functionality.  

This is coming on the heels of news that following regulatory approval, BlackBerry has completed the acquisition of Secusmart GmbH, a leader in high-security voice and data encryption and anti-eavesdropping solutions for government organizations, enterprises and telecommunications service providers in Germany and around the world. Terms of this transaction were not disclosed

Meanwhile, Android is an important part of BlackBerry’s EMM ecosystem.

Android smartphones and tablets are natively managed within the BES12 environment, which enables enterprises to provide users with a selection of devices from various mobile platforms, while streamlining management into a single command and control center.

BlackBerry’s gold standard of security is extended to BES12 and delivers added confidence to customers who deploy Android devices as part of a cross-platform mobility strategy.

“Customers recognize the risks that mobility brings into their organization, and BES12 is the insurance policy that will protect their critical data while giving them the freedom to choose whichever platforms they prefer,” said Billy Ho, executive vice president, Enterprise Product and Value Added Solutions, BlackBerry. “We are pleased to manage Android Lollipop through BES12, allowing enterprises to enable better productivity for their employees.”

BES12 provides expanded EMM capabilities that can manage any mobile deployment model such as BYOD, COPE and COBO, and leverages BlackBerry’s global infrastructure.

The flexibility and scalability of the new BES12 architecture allows customers to transition to a cloud environment.

BlackBerry has delivered on its commitment to provide on-premise and private cloud BES12 deployments, with the public cloud offering expected in early 2015.

And with Secusmart’s acquisition, BlackBerry strengthened its leadership in secure enterprise mobility encryption and anti-eavesdropping capabilities.

Secusmart’s technology will bolster BlackBerry’s end-to-end offerings that provide the highest level of security from the device to the management platform.

“The acquisition of Secusmart underscores BlackBerry’s long-standing commitment to being the best in enterprise mobile security. BlackBerry is the only vendor to offer secure and encrypted voice, text and messaging, setting us further apart from others in the industry,” said John Chen, executive chairman and ceo, BlackBerry. “With the benefit of Secusmart’s talented team at BlackBerry, we look forward to building on our leadership position in mobile security at a time when cybersecurity breaches and data theft pose ever-growing costs and threats to governments, companies and consumers.”

“We’re thrilled with the acquisition as we see significant opportunities to accelerate innovation for high-end secure communications solutions,” said Dr. Hans-Christoph Quelle, managing director of Secusmart. “Having successfully partnered since 2009 to provide Secusmart’s voice and data encryption capabilities to BlackBerry’s gold standard security portfolio, we look forward to introducing Secusmart’s solutions to more of BlackBerry’s government and enterprise customers around the world.”

Last year, the SecuSUITE for BlackBerry® 10 solution was selected by Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security for classified communications for the country’s highest public officials.

BlackBerry’s acquisition of Secusmart is the latest demonstration of the company’s commitment to remaining the leading provider in enterprise mobile security.

BlackBerry is the only mobile device management (MDM) vendor that has achieved the “Full Operational Capability” level of certification for operation on U.S. Department of Defense Networks.

BlackBerry 10 smartphones were the first to be approved by NATO for classified communications up to “Restricted” level.