BlackBerry Releases Three New Services to Make IoT Devices More Secure

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BlackBerry’s team of cybersecurity experts will review the device,after the product will be deemed BlackBerry Secure.

A good news for IoT device manufacturers build safe and secure smart products as the BlackBerry, the erstwhile mobile device maker, has put forwarded a new set of services to help them.It is offering three new services by supplying hardware and software security support during both the manufacturing and development processes.

It is expecting that BlackBerry will showcase its new solutions at CES 2019.

According to the recent BlackBerry survey  80 per cent of consumers in the U.S., U.K. and Canada do not trust their current Internet-connected devices to secure their data and privacy.They were also more likely to choose a product or do business with a company that had a strong reputation for data security and privacy.

The cybersecurity experts of BlackBerry will review the device to ensure the products have been developed to the company’s standards and will be deemed BlackBerry Secure, a recognized symbol of data security and trust.

OEMs can now avail these three new BlackBerry Secure feature packs

BlackBerry Secure Enablement Feature Pack: The enablement pack offers secure manufacturing and product lifecycle management features. Specifically, BlackBerry will provide a manufacturing station that provides a hardware Root of Trust and is connected to the company’s Network Operation Center that is monitored 24/7 for uptime and reliability.

As per the official sources,during manufacturing, a BlackBerry Secure Identity Service Key is injected into the hardware and recorded on a secure server. Both at launch and periodically throughout the product’s lifecycle, checks are performed to verify that the two keys match. If they do not, the device no longer boots.

This focuses on making the software in IoT devices more secure.In addition to hardening the operating system kernel, the Foundations Pack locks down software being executed with Secure Boot and ARM Trustzone technology to securely generate, use and store encryption keys used for various software operations. It also includes the BlackBerry Integrity Detection (BID) service which various components (kernel, Pathtrust, SELinux, etc) across the software stack, and generates real-time ‘health’ reports that can be accessed by users and trusted third-party applications.

It is ideal for devices that will be used in regulated or restricted environments as it enables deeper management and control beyond what is standard in Android Enterprise.

Through extended device management policies deployed on the device, enterprises can protect their data by controlling what can be accessed via device debug interfaces, communication protocols (Bluetooth, NFC), and radios (cellular, WIFI, GPS). It is also able to set policies which add baseline security for certifications such as FIPS.