Less than a decade ago BlackBerry was the undisputed king in the workplace. An overwhelming number of enterprises relied upon its technology for communications. Since then the company has lost significant market share, even in its stronghold, to the likes of Apple and Samsung. BlackBerry made quite a few management changes last year and is now going about recovering its lost users. In order to appease its lost enterprise customers BlackBerry today announced the launch of BBM Protected.
BBM or BlackBerry Messenger was once an integral part of the BlackBerry experience. However last year the messaging service was finally opened up to both Android and iOS. BBM Protected is part of BlackBerry’s eBBM suite. It features additional encryption and offers an enhanced security model for security-conscious organizations.
Its geared towards customers in regulated industries like banks, law firms or healthcare providers. BlackBerry says that since many of the widely available IM apps don’t meet the security standards set by IT departments, such organizations are caught “between a rock and a hard place.” BBM Protected provides them with a bona fide instant messaging experience while also enabling them to meet compliance obligations.
BlackBerry says that BBM Protected is the only service of its kind to use FIPs 140-2 validated cryptographic library, a computer security standard set by the U.S. government to accredit cryptographic modules, to protect messages when data is in transit.