With BlackBerry falling behind Apple and Google in the race for features and third-party features for its smartphones, the company has decided to focus its efforts creating devices that have the strongest available security.
This initiative comes during a time where the top smartphone companies like Apple and Samsung are receiving much criticism for supposedly being involved with the government spy agencies.
At a company-sponsored symposium in New York on Tuesday, the company said that it would provide levels of security that cannot be replicated by Apple, Android or any other mobile device.
The executives at the event gloated about BlackBerry being able to offer end-to-end security protection, as it controls both the OS and hardware of its devices.
"A lot of vendors are starting to go to a unified mobile security platform. And that is the core of where the future of mobile security is headed. It is merging the security at the application layer, the operating system layer and the network layer into a single platform," said Tyler Fields, an analyst for Forrester Research who covers mobile security, at the event. Those vendors "that make the unified platform will succeed in the long run," he said.
The OS will give an app the permission needed to access only necessary functions and data. All other assets are off limits. This will minimize malware attacks, and as each app is started up, it is scanned to ensure nothing has been changed.
"The layers of security are so extreme, I don't think anyone else is touching this," said Dan Dodge, BlackBerry CEO of QNX, and the BlackBerry OS.
"There is not another manufacturer or developer that has achieved this level of security," said Peter Lesser, New York Law Firm Skadden's director of global technology.
The end-to-end security provided by BlackBerry is a good step moving forward, though questions remain about how well the devices can compete with Apple's and Google's with this approach.
