BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) wants to position itself as the safest provider of mobile technology and services and, therefore, it earlier announced plans of acquiring the encryption technology called Secusmart. The deal was not finalized, and was awaiting few security clearances, but now it has been approved by Germany, says a report from Reuters.
“The German government has examined the planned purchase of Secusmart by Blackberry and given its approval for it to go ahead,” an economy ministry spokeswoman said on Friday.
More secure devices
CEO John Chen is trying his best to make the company recover from the decline it has faced in recent years and at the same time enhance its product offerings for better security and customer satisfaction. The acquisition of Secusmart is the part of the efforts made by the CEO John Chen to reach out to the security conscious clients like the government organizations and the corporate. This technology is used by the top politicians for protecting their devices, and Chancellor Angela Merkel is one of those.
The deal of acquiring Secusmart, a privately-held firm based in Duesseldorf, was proposed by BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) in July. Since then it was held for scrutiny by the German government to determine if it could pose a threat to German interests.
The deal attracted scrutiny as at that time it was revealed that the telephonic conversations made using a non-encrypted phone by Merkel were overheard by the U.S. intelligence agencies. Devices from BlackBerry that come with Secusmart encryption are being used by the government officials in Germany including Merkel.
What BlackBerry promised in return?
The conditions under which Berlin gave approval to the said acquisition were not confirmed by authorities. However, it is speculated that Germany asked that the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) must get some access and control over the code used in the BlackBerry devices. Also, it is believed that BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) has given assurances to Germany that it will not pass on any confidential information to the foreign intelligence agencies.
The deal was thoroughly scrutinized by the ministry to assure that no essential security concerns were violated as informed by ministry. As many as 2500 Blackberry devices are used by the German government official’s that have Secusmart encryption software in them. A Secusmart microSD card is incorporated into the handset, which is inaccessible to hackers, and it stores the confidential information and acts as a separate hard drive.
