At CES Government today, BlackBerry CEO John Chen announced the company’s plan to open a security innovation center in Washington DC. Chen underlined the importance of mobile security and said BlackBerry was reaffirming its commitment to work closely with government partners to help build products and policy for the public and private sectors.
Unfortunately, details about BlackBerry’s new security innovation center were scarce. The company said it would offer additional information “in the coming weeks” but wouldn’t elaborate further beyond the fact that the center would serve as a hub for collaboration with key government customers and other partners.
“We are committed to working with government and industry experts to solve some of the biggest challenges we face in securing mobile communication,” Chen said during his speech in Las Vegas. “The Washington, D.C.-based security innovation center will be focused on creating lasting partnerships that will encourage ongoing dialogue aimed at making better products and policy.”
BlackBerry has a long history of working with governments around the world, and regularly receives various security certifications for its products. As competition continues to heat up in the mobile space, the Canadian company is looking to ensure it remains top of mind among one of its key customer bases.
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Most recently, BlackBerry teamed up with Mozilla to secure mobile browsers via fault injection (commonly known as fuzzing). A security center in DC could also help the struggling company, though to what extent is hard to judge until we know exactly what it will be used for. That being said, BlackBerry may not want to give away too much for fear of information falling into the wrong hands.
See also – US Department of Defense approves BlackBerry 10 smartphones and PlayBook tablets for use on its networks and BlackBerry 10 gets US government certification, first time RIM products approved ahead of launch
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