14 DAY TRIAL // The long-awaited BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) Protected service for mobile devices has just been officially introduced by the Canadian company.
According to BlackBerry, BBM Protected will initially be available to BES customers with smartphones operating on BES 5, as well as customers with BlackBerry 10 devices with gold licenses on BES 10 running EMM regulated Work Space mode only.
Android and iOS business customers haven’t been forgotten either, but they will have to wait a bit longer in order to benefit from the new service.
BlackBerry has confirmed that, beginning this fall, it will start adding BBM Protected support for enterprise customers with BlackBerry 10 smartphones in Work/Personal Balance mode as well as businesses with iPhone and Android devices.
For those unfamiliar with what exactly BBM Protected service is, here is a quick recap. As BlackBerry points out, BBM Protected is a completely new service that allows enterprise users to take advantage of various features that are not available in the basic version of BBM.
For example, BBM Protected users will get improved speed and reliability, as well as more privacy features for better and faster communication.
BlackBerry mentions that BBM Protected service benefits from improved security for messages sent between BlackBerry smartphones, which protects corporate data end to end with additional encryption.
Thanks to the extra layer of security added via this new service, messages of two BBM Protected users are encrypted using an encryption key unique to those two users.
According to BlackBerry, that encryption key is controlled by the enterprise customers, so the Canadian company is never involved in any way in the communication between users.
As the title says, the new service is aimed at enterprise customers who want an extra layer of security and more reliability for their BBM communication.
Here is BlackBerry’s short explanation on how this is achieved: “The first time that two BBM Protected users go to establish a chat, they will be required to share a secret passphrase to authenticate their identities and generate the BBM Protected encryption key used to secure their chat.”
BlackBerry also highlights some of the most important features of the new BBM Protected service, such as the fact that it’s the only secure IM client to use a FIPS 140-2 validated cryptographic library and that it uses 3 layers of security for data in transit in order to protect messages.
There are important advantages for IT as well, such as the fact that BBM Protected allows end users to securely message other BBM Protected users outside their company, on different BES services without the need for any other costly solution.
For more in-depth details on what BBM Protected service has to offer enterprise customers, make sure to check out the official announcement.