BlackBerry Awarded CE+ Cyber Security Certification From UK Government

BlackBerry has been awarded a new cyber security validation by the UK government, making it the first UK mobile vendor to receive the Cyber Essentials Plus (CE+) certification.

CE+ builds upon the base CE certification which covers a range of security processes, such as account management and firewall configurations. To win the ‘plus’ denomination, BlackBerry needed to be tested by a qualified and authorised external tester to ensure its network, verification of account security, and its defences against malicious software are all up to scratch.

Securing the government

“As cyber security becomes more and more of a concern, the UK Ministry of Defence is mandating that its supply chain be Cyber Essentials certified for sensitive projects,” said Adam Boulton, senior VP of Security Technology at BlackBerry.

With the new security certification BlackBerry, can expand its presence in government, building upon the secure services it already offers the public sector, such as providing secure communication for the military.

Ever since the introduction of BlackBerry Messenger, the company has built a reputation of providing secure communications. This has been an area it has fallen back on after its once dominant mobile phone division started haemorrhaging losses in the face of competition from the likes of Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s smartphones.

To cope with this, BlackBerry appeared to partially pivot, moving away from building smartphones based on its own operating system and instead focussing on providing secure communications software and services.

In September, the company appeared to stop making smartphones all together, but then a month later BlackBerry revealed the DTEK60, it’s third Android smartphones, showing that the company is not yet completely ready to leave the smartphone arena. However, such devices serve almost as a platform for Blackberry’s secure communications expertise.

A good example of this can be see with the ‘spy-proof’ tablet BlackBerry made of the German government, combining its security software with Samsung’s Knox mobile security platform.

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