The struggling Canadian handset maker has now purchased the Secusmart anti-eavesdropping company.
BlackBerry has now made the latest in a series of moves that are designed to allow the company to claw its way back into relevance and – dare it be said – successful recovery, through the acquisition of a mobile security company called Secusmart.
The firm’s anti-eavesdropping technology align with BlackBerry’s new focus on amped up security.
Secusmart’s high powered mobile security technology was initially developed in order to provide the smartphones of German government officials – such as Chancellor Angela Merkel – with the protection needed to keep the mobile device’s contents and communications safe. Now, BlackBerry, based in Waterloo, Canada, has revealed that it will be acquiring that firm in order to provide added oomph to the security levels that it can offer through its own products.
The announcement of the mobile security firm’s acquisition was made by BlackBerry at a New York event.
John Chen, the CEO of BlackBerry, explained that the purchase of Secusmart allows his own company to be able to address rapidly rising concerns about threats to national security and to individual privacy, alike, when it comes to mobile devices.
Chen explained that “We are always improving our security solutions to keep up with the growing complexity of enterprise mobility, with devices being used for more critical tasks and to store more critical information, and security attacks becoming more sophisticated.”
At the time that this article was written, the financial details of this acquisition had not yet been released. Moreover, BlackBerry had revealed that there are still some conditions – such as regulatory approval – which must still be met before the deal can officially close.
This is a highly strategic move by BlackBerry, and is a potentially powerful one, as it places BlackBerry in direct competition with Samsung and Apple, in an area in which those two companies have already made considerable inroads – mobile security. That said, that same field is one in which BlackBerry had once been exclusively dominant and where it plans to regain at least a good slice of its former glory. This could become much more possible with Secusmart, as its technology includes high-level data and voice encryption for business, telecommunications service providers, and even governments.
