BlackBerry Ltd (BBRY) Acquires German Tech Security Firm Secusmart

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BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) is strengthening up its security shield with the acquisition of anti-eavesdropping firm Secusmart, the same technology used by the Smartphone makers in Germany to secure the phones of German officials including Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Chen beefing up security

The Canadian Smartphone maker has revealed the blueprint of its plans to beef up security tools during an event on Tuesday in New York. John Chen, CEO of BlackBerry, said that acquisition of Secusmart is a step towards safeguarding the individual privacy and national security from rising threats.

Chen added that the company continuously works to improvise its security solutions to catch up with the growing complexity of enterprise mobility as devices are now being used in more critical tasks. BlackBerry said that there are still some conditions to go through before the acquisition are concluded, not giving any detail on the financial terms.

BlackBerry is making efforts to retain its dominance in the mobile security domain, where the company faces tech-giants such as Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Samsung as new competition.

Secusmart managing director Hans-Christoph Quelle said, “We see significant opportunities to introduce Secusmart’s solutions to more of BlackBerry’s government and enterprise customers around the world.” BlackBerry has already clarified the way in which acquisition of Secusmart will benefit it. However, the company can also build an all-inclusive infrastructure that would serve as a strong base for BlackBerry.

German officials prefer BlackBerry

German company Secusmart offers high-level voice and data encryption for governments, corporate and telecommunication service providers. Citing documents from the National security, magazine Der Spiegel reported last year, that the U.S. government of spied on Merkel’s Nokia phone.

Merkel switched to BlackBerry Z10 phone even before the news was released.  Secusmart has devised a special technology for BlackBerry 10 that was rigged in the several German government agencies, ministries and leaders after receiving the approval from the country’s information security office.

Corporate security issues became topic of discussion following the Target Corp incident, where massive data and private information of the customers were stolen. Canadian government alleged the Chinese hackers of breaching into the systems at the National research council. Exchange of information through smartphone has increased among the government agencies, which allows the third parties to easily cut into the private information.

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