Blackberry has made it clear that they are looking to take a significant share of the cybersecurity market. John Chen CEO of blackberry had this to say following their acquisition of Cylance, a privately held artificial intelligence and cybersecurity company “Today Blackberry took a giant step forward toward out goal of being the world’s largest and most trusted AI-cybersecurity company”. Cyclance’s machine learning and artificial intelligence technology will be used by blackberry to improve their end-to-end secure communications technology, in particular it helped them to accelerate the development of their new secure communications platform Blackberry Spark, which is the focus of this article today.
What is Blackberry Spark?
Blackberry spark has three main selling points, it’s unified endpoint security, unified endpoint management and zero trust security. Spark is a unified endpoint security solution, which simply means it’s protects individual devices like desktop computers, mobile devices, servers and any other device that connects to the internet.
The unified endpoint management makes it easy to manage all the devices that are being protected by blackberry spark. Think of it like a central dashboard that will allow you to see all the devices you are managing and make changes remotely.
Lastly is the zero trust model, which is a prevalent concept in security. The idea is that nothing and no one should be trusted by default, including users within your network. Everyone should be assumed to be hostile until proven otherwise. Usually, the downside of a zero trust model is that it reduces the user’s ability to access information quickly and easily. Blackberry combines the idea of a zero trust model with their zero touch experience, which means that users will be given instant access to resources. Blackberry is looking to use AI and analytics to deliver both a zero trust and zero touch model.
Source @blackberry.com
Why is this important?
Blackberry has made it clear that they are looking to be one of the big players in cybersecurity. In the last 5 years they have fallen off many people’s radars as their phone has almost completely died out. However, they have found a new niche to be known for in cybersecurity. Cybersecurity, combined with Artificial intelligence and machine appears to be their new target and the opportunity is huge. Blackberry has always been known for creating very secure products, even going back to their phones. So far this project has gained strong traction in the market.
“BlackBerry Spark leverages the company’s deep portfolio of technology that has earned 80+ certifications, which is more than any other IoT vendor. It includes FIPS-validated, app-level, AES 256-bit encryption to ensure data is always protected on a device, across the mobile network and into a company’s infrastructure. BlackBerry Spark will enable organizations to comply with stringent multi-national regulatory requirements. In fact, BlackBerry is the only EoT platform provider to achieve Common Criteria EAL4+ for both iOS and Android.”
Additionally, blackberry spark has gotten traction with the US air force. The US air force has decided to go with blackberry spark for securing their infrastructure, which as impressive as it is for blackberry will no doubt inspire other companies to look into using blackberry’s technology as well. John Chen, CEO of blackberry had this to say on the deal “BlackBerry and the United States Federal Government have been trusted partners for over twenty years, The United States Air Force has a rich history and a critical mission across air, space and cyberspace. We are proud to be their partner and to provide them superior technology that enables their operations.”
Conclusion
Blackberry (NYSE: BB; TSX: BB) has made some very impressive moves into the cybersecurity space and their new product has successfully combined three of the biggest disciplines of the 21st century, AI, cybersecurity and big data analytics. Blackberry spark aims to deliver a zero trust and zero touch model simultaneously. This means having the best security possibility without sacrificing productivity and ease of use, which means companies would be getting the best of both worlds. If you’re someone interested in investing in stocks, looking for an interesting place to work or considering a cybersecurity solution for your own company, blackberry is a company to watch for the next few years.