Kellen in News 9 years ago

This is How Blackberry “Secures the Android Platform” With the Priv

As Blackberry mentioned today in a blog post about securing Android, they have a “long and storied” history of being able to do so on mobile devices. They lay claim to things like being the first to secure email and other applications and deploy app permissions. Because of that history, they want you to believe that by teaming up with Google for the Blackberry Priv, they will give you a more secure mobile Android platform than anyone else.

The odd thing about today’s blog post, is that they reference a previous post we hadn’t seen before that talks about how they are the ones who actually plan to make Android secure, because as of right now, “it’s not protecting your privacy.” Yikes. So Blackberry is excited to team up with Google, but it sounds like they also think Android is a sh*t platform when it comes to security. Sounds like the start of a wonderful partnership!

Either way, here are the “world-renowned” security ideas they are bringing to Android and the Priv.

BlackBerry’s Hardware Root of Trust, a unique manufacturing process that injects cryptographic keys into the device hardware, providing a secure foundation for the entire platform.
Verified Boot and Secure Bootchain, which uses the embedded keys to verify every layer of the device from hardware to OS to applications in order to make sure they haven’t been tampered with.
A hardened Linux kernel with numerous patches and configuration changes to improve security.
FIPS 140-2 compliant full disk encryption on by default to protect your privacy.
The BlackBerry Infrastructure, a secure distributed global network that transmits petabytes of encrypted data to and from the world’s most powerful leaders and professionals.
BES12, the leading Enterprise Mobility Management platform used by the world’s most powerful governments and corporations.

And look, I’m not trying to go easy on Google and the number of security issues that have been brought up lately, but man, tearing into your new partner seems like an odd first step. I guess Blackberry better really bring it!