BlackBerry®, the leading global company for wireless innovation, has initiated closer cooperation with certgate, the specialist for IT security, so that it can continue to offer its customers hardware-based security where required.
With the release of the BlackBerry® 10.1 OS in mid-May, both the BlackBerry® Z10 and the BlackBerry® Q10 are able to use the hardware-based cryptographic functionality after downloading the smartcard subsystem from the BlackBerry App World and inserting the certgate smartcard component cgSecurePlatform.
The certgate middleware is an established feature of the BlackBerry® smartcard subsystem and exclusively supports the certgate component cgSecurePlatform.
There is no need for complicated and laborious software roll-outs, because a personalised micro SD card with cgSecurePlatform can simply be inserted in the microSD slot of the BlackBerry® and put into operation immediately.
"The integration of our cgSecurePlatform solution in the BlackBerry® 10 is unique on the market in more than one sense: the patented certgate product is the only microSD solution in the world that can be deployed in the BlackBerry® with such unrivalled simplicity in terms of user-friendliness. For the first time this permits an extremely uncomplicated integration in the PKI of every organisation, including the certificate-based user authentication and PC registration," certgate CEO Axel Stett says when explaining the benefits to users of the company's cooperation with BlackBerry®.
BlackBerry® is well-known for taking effective measures at all times to keep business messages, contacts, appointments and documents secret. With the additional use of cgSecurePlatform, these mechanisms will be strengthened by certified hardware-based cryptography and will have end-to-end security. "Software cannot be protected using software," states Stefan Schmidt-Egermann, who is responsible for Business Development at certgate, quoting an appropriate IT paradigm.
To make the cgSecurePlatform even more universally usable on the BlackBerry® in future, certgate is pushing ahead with a BlackBerry® 10-capable version of the NFC proxy familiar from earlier generations of the BlackBerry® OS, and using which the highly secure cgSecurePlatform solution can be deployed inside the device via the BlackBerry® NFC interface.