RIM Launches Solution To Secure and Separate Work and Play

BlackBerry Balance Helps Unify Work and Personal Use of BlackBerry Devices without Compromising Company Security or Personal Privacy

Research In Motion (RIM) today announced “BlackBerry Balance”, a new solution designed to improve work-life balance by enabling users to use a single BlackBerry smartphone for both work and personal purposes without compromising the security of company data and the privacy of personal content.

The BlackBerry Balance solution is a move by RIM in response to the growing trend often referred to as consumerization or user-driven IT, when businesses allow employees to use personal smartphones for work, or company-owned smartphones for personal use. The trend has triggered security and privacy concerns, and businesses realize the need to secure, manage and control confidential company or client information on these devices.

RIM says the BlackBerry Balance solution 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. 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 like Facebook, Twitter, Hotmail, Gmail 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.

“BlackBerry Balance is a win-win for employers and employees,” said Jim Tobin, senior vice president, 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 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.

Read More in SecurityWeek’s Mobile & Wireless Security Section