BlackBerry has been doubling down on its reputation as the most secure mobile device manufacturer lately and the company just made a very smart move that could solidify that reputation even further. BlackBerry announced that it acquired German security firm Secusmart on Tuesday and as ZDNet points out, this could be a very big move for BlackBerry as it tries to make sure its enterprise and government customers don’t jump ship to iOS and Android devices.
Why is Secusmart such a big deal? ZDNet informs us that its Secusmart Security Card is “a mini-computer integrated into the micro-SD card” that “contains the NXP SmartMX P5CT072 crypto-controller with a PKI coprocessor for authentication” and features “an additional high-speed coprocessor encrypts voice and data communication using 128 bit AES.” In plain English, this means that Secusmart’s top product has multiple layers of security to keep voice and data communications safe.
This is particularly important because in the wake of the massive NSA spying scandal, many governments around the world have been reluctant to trust American companies such as Microsoft and Google when it comes to keeping their data safe. While there aren’t many people who need a smartphone that’s as secure as ones that are equipped with the Secusmart card, the people who do need it are a potentially profitable niche. After all, both U.S. president Barack Obama and German chancellor Angela Merkel both only use BlackBerry devices for mobile communications since no other devices have yet proven themselves up to snuff.
So in all, this looks like a good move for the pride of Waterloo, Ontario — and certainly a much better move than, say, partnering with HP.
