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May 5 2006

Research In Motion (RIM) and Government security experts, CESG, today announced that RIM has gained approval for Government employees to use BlackBerry(R) devices to handle "Restricted" data.

CESG is the National Technical Authority for Information Assurance and provides guidance to public and private bodies involved in secure data transmission.


BlackBerry is very popular with businesses and governments worldwide and RIM has been working with evaluation teams at CESG in Cheltenham to gain its approval of BlackBerry for broader public sector use.


Following the first phase of the evaluation, CESG released guidance that allows government customers to start deploying BlackBerry devices to their mobile staff. The guidance covers email, attachment viewing and access to application data through the BlackBerry Mobile Data System(TM).


"The BlackBerry solution provides a security architecture that is trusted by corporations and governments around the world to enhance their operations, productivity and responsiveness," said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at RIM. "The CESG approval further demonstrates that RIM meets the stringent security requirements for government use in the UK."


The BlackBerry Enterprise Solution allows users to access their information wirelessly, while seamlessly protecting data against attack. The solution uses the Triple Data Encryption Standard (Triple-DES) and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption methods to encrypt data for wireless transmission, and AES encryption to protect data stored on the device. AES and Triple DES are both widely trusted encryption technologies that are considered computationally infeasible to break. The BlackBerry Enterprise Solution is designed so that data remains encrypted during transit between the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and a BlackBerry handheld device, allowing for the secure transmission of "Restricted" data.