US Department of Defense approves BlackBerry 7 devices

RIM has announced today that the U.S. Department of Defense has approved agency use of a number of BlackBerry 7 smartphones.

After successful testing by U.S. Army and Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) sponsors and partners, the following phones are now listed on DISA's Unified Communications Approved Product List (UCAPL):

BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930 (touch screen with keyboard)
BlackBerry Torch 9810 (touch screen with slide out keyboard)
BlackBerry Torch 9850 and 9860 (full screen touch screen)
BlackBerry Curve 9360 (keyboard)

"The Army introduced a wide range of new apps and capabilities for their BlackBerry users last year, and these new BlackBerry 7 smartphones will now enable Army users, and all DoD users, to experience an even greater level of performance on new smartphones that include features such as voice activated universal search, Near Field Communications, Augmented Reality, and Social Feeds 2.0 just to name a few," says Scott Totzke, SVP, BlackBerry Security Group at RIM. "RIM's unwavering focus on security and RIM's achievement of key security certifications including FIPS 140-2 validation and Common Criteria EAL4+ accreditation continue to be very important to many of our DoD and enterprise customers, but leveraging the full power of BlackBerry smartphones is also important as it helps them realize the full potential of their investment in the BlackBerry platform."

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 9 May 2012 20:21

Morreale

This kinda news will probably boost corporate sales all around, I would think?

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9.5.2012 23:30 #1

KillerBug

Most corporate it departments have decent lead it guys that know better. Just because the DoD says something is secure does not make it so, wikileaks is proof of that. Their requirements for this certification are all things that are available on android and that are not turned on by default on blackberry. On top of that, blackberry messaging is not as secure or reliable as gmail, even if it does make big claims on paper. Really the only reason bbos is even slightly secure is that no one cares enough about it to bother writing malware for it, and that will change if high level DoD personnel all adopt it. Only a very lazy it department would recommend using these devices based on this, and such a department would not bother to turn the security features on because of the extra tech support calls saying, "why can't I download apps" and "how do I recover the 256 bit aes password after I tried 5 times and now it says the device has been wiped?!?!"

10.5.2012 10:16 #2

Steel-Ice

But the BB isn't American made...
It is funny that the military can only use material made in the US. Although I do see logic. If we was using material from another country and we was to go to war with said country we'd be screwed.

10.5.2012 16:36 #3

kabledog

Leave it to the United States Gov't to approve what the public rejected. Just last month RIM hired a law firm to help handle its "restructuring", and headlines such as "Blackberry Trade-Ins Rise By 80% As Customers Lose Faith" and "Blackberry loses ground as smartphone use grows" showed no future for this company. Rim has been falling from its perch for along time now, when was testing started....2 years ago?
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10.5.2012 19:04 #4

kabledog

Originally posted by Steel-Ice: But the BB isn't American made...
It is funny that the military can only use material made in the US. Although I do see logic. If we was using material from another country and we was to go to war with said country we'd be screwed.
Their uniforms, patches, decals, boots, some vehicles, and some weapons are made in other countries...

10.5.2012 19:09 #5

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