After 20 years, Blackberry still lives and introduces its IoT Security Platform (via Blackberry)
Remember Blackberry? The phone that rocked company executives minds as they raced to sign up for company mobile phones that allowed them to access their blessed Windows operating systems from anywhere.
Well, I’m so glad that those days have come and gone with the rise of iPhone and Android smartphones that blew Blackberry out of the water a long time ago – and good riddance. However, like a cockroach, Blackberry is the innovator that never dies and they are determined to make a comeback.
While their smartphone innovations were popular for a while, they are pretty much going the way of the dinosaur, so Blackberry thought they’d go back to what they are good at: secure mobile applications.
After all, that’s what got Blackberry to where they are now. They are using their current strengths to enter the race for IoT security. They also could not have picked a better time. With the recent money-grubbing hands of investors that pipelined heavy capital into enterprise IoT security systems in mid-April, the race is on for the next leader in IoT security systems.
I don’t know that Blackberry will win this race with huge companies like Raytheon and Websense Triton hot on the market, but they seem to be targeting a slightly different market opportunities.
Blackberry is going to use encryption certificates to provide secured data communications for virtually any IoT device, starting with parking meters in the UK and plans to utilize them in home energy meters next. They also hope to use this technology in the automotive industry for car radios, and more. Their subsidiary company, Certicom, specializes in what they call ‘elliptic-curved cryptography.’ Their currently rolling out this new technology in the UK for over 104 million parking meters and smart home energy meters across the country. The certificates will secure the information gathered by the meters and send it securely to the enterprise management system. Because the certificate system is so streamlined, Blackberry argues that it is easily scalable and are confident that they can support hundreds of millions of IoT devices in the near future. Of course, this still leaves much room for continued growth because a recent forecast is expected the number of connect IoT devices to equal 20 billion by 2020.
Blackberry’s IoT Platform is already underway and in the trial period for small and big businesses alike. They are currently targeting businesses with more than 10 employees who are expecting to use the technology for automotive or asset tracking. Hence, it seems that Blackberry is allowing for the small and medium sized enterprises to get in on the IoT security game in a way that is more inviting than other IoT enterprise security systems that are targeting corporations and MNCs like Amazon, Sony, Microsoft, and Google.
One thing is certain; we are going to see a lot of interesting developments in IoT security in the next few years. If it helps to secure our information, then I suppose there is no harm done in this growing competitive market for the next IoT security giant.
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