BlackBerry to separate personal and work data
Research In Motion (RIM) recently unveiled BlackBerry Balance – a new technology that makes it possible to use a single BlackBerry smartphone for both work and personal purposes without compromising the security of company content and the privacy of personal content.
RIM said that it is introducing this technology in response to the growing trend by businesses to allow employees to use personal BlackBerry smartphones for work, or company-owned smartphones for personal purposes, as well as the need by businesses to secure, manage and control confidential company or client information on these devices.
“BlackBerry Balance is a win-win for employers and employees,” said Jim Tobin, senior vice president for software and services at Research In Motion. “It’s a secure and cost-effective way for companies to keep employees connected and productive, while also allowing the flexibility for employees to carry a single phone.”
BlackBerry Balance presents a unified view of work and personal content on a BlackBerry smartphone while keeping the content separate and secure.
The division between work and personal content is transparent to the user unless they try to perform actions prohibited by company policy. IT administrators can set policies via BlackBerry Enterprise Server or BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express.
According to RIM, these policy settings can enable the following:
- Secure access to business information while preventing the information from being copied into, sent from or used by personal applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live Hotmail, Google Mail or Yahoo! Mail accounts.
- Business data or files created by business applications cannot be used by personal applications.
- If a user attempts an action that is prohibited by IT policy, a notification is displayed on the device.
- If an employee leaves the organization, an administrator can remotely wipe business information from the device while leaving personal information intact.
- If a device is lost or stolen, an administrator can wipe all information from the device to help ensure that sensitive business information and the user’s personal information don’t fall into the wrong hands.
RIM said that BlackBerry Balance is available only on BlackBerry devices and can be applied to employee- or company-owned smartphones. It is built into BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0.3 and BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express 5.0.3 (available this week) for Microsoft Exchange or IBM Lotus Domino. It also requires the latest version of BlackBerry 6 Device Software.
BlackBerry to separate personal and work data << Comments and views
Jan Vermeulen is a guest of RIM South Africa at BlackBerry World. Follow Jan (@exxor) and/or MyBroadband (@mybroadband) for live updates from the event (Wi-Fi permitting).
Loading ...