DISA is already working on supporting 30,000 BB10 handsets on DoD networks in 2013

Aug 9, 2013 10:00 GMT  ·  By

Canadian mobile phone maker BlackBerry has been losing a lot of ground on the smartphone market lately, and it might continue to do so, but it seems that it now has the chance to catch a breath.

On Thursday, the company announced that the U.S. Defense Information System Agency (DISA) had approved its BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 smartphones with BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 for use on the Department of Defense (DoD) networks.

BlackBerry is the first Mobile Device Management (MDM) provider out there to have received the Authority to Operate (ATO) from DISA, the company also announced.

Furthermore, following the ATO, DISA is working on the necessary infrastructure to offer support for the BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 mobile devices.

Basically, DISA is planning on delivering support for 10,000 BlackBerry 10 smartphones on DoD networks by this fall, while planning on expanding that support for as many as 30,000 units by the end of 2013.

“Being the first smartphones to be supported on U.S. Department of Defense networks further establishes BlackBerry’s proven and validated security model,” said Scott Totzke, SVP, BlackBerry Security Group at BlackBerry.

“With foreign entities – governmental and criminal – ramping up attacks on electronic communications and information systems, BlackBerry provides government agencies with a proven partner that follows top-to-bottom security protocols.”

According to BlackBerry, receiving the ATO is a critical step in the security certification process, one that proves the fact that BlackBerry 10 devices meet DoD’s most stringent security requirements.

Through BlackBerry 10 smartphones, DoD personnel will have the possibility to securely connect to networks and to take advantage of access to assets from work.

“The BlackBerry mobile infrastructure provides a highly responsive, intelligent and intuitive mobile computing experience while ensuring the personal and the corporate information on a user’s phone are kept separate and safe,” the handset vendor also said.