In all the craziness leading up to BlackBerry 10’s launch its nice to see developers extending support to current BlackBerry devices with BlackBerry 10 plans. SpecterSoft announced a new version of their Spector 360 user activity monitoring solution with support for BlackBerry on top of their current Windows and Mac support. This means companies can monitor BlackBerry calls, email, and chat data. SpecterSoft let us know that when they announced their new support last week people asked why they were developing for BlackBerry Java devices. They turned around laid out the following points on their blog on why BlackBerry is the right device for businesses that are serious about security, compliance, and risk/governance:
- Focus on Data Security – BlackBerry has always enjoyed using an encrypted channel to ensure data is only accessed by the intended recipient. SPECTOR 360 is designed to increase the security of an organization by assisting with the detection of Insider Threats to security. It does so by monitoring employeeactivity to identify what data employees access, and what they do with it.
- Focus on Device Security – from literally hundreds of IT security policies that can be applied to nearly every aspect of a BlackBerry device, to mature Mobile Device Management capabilities, it’s obvious BlackBerry is serious about keeping the device secure. SPECTOR 360 has helped customers keep their Windows and Mac clients secure by monitoring and alerting in real-time for actions that may introduce malware, such as when employees use non-standard browsers, downloading EXEs from the Internet, using alternative search engines or visiting suspect websites.
- Penetration in Security-Focused Markets – specific market verticals – like Government and Finance – take their security very seriously and, therefore, utilize the BlackBerry platform. SPECTOR 360’s insight into employee activity is even more valuable in these organizations, as issues like data theft, employee fraud, data loss and compliance breaches all start with the employee and their actions.
- Increasing Productivity – New features like BlackBerry Balance that gives users the ability to maintain separate sets of personal and work data on the same device demonstrate BlackBerry’s desire to keep employees productive. SPECTOR 360’s ability to uniquely gauge actual Internet and application use helps companies daily to see who is working and who is playing around.
- Commitment to Partners – In order to provide visibility into employee activity, SPECTOR 360 needs to see under the hood of a client device. RIM provides access to their platform through APIs and has worked to ensure our success. That’s huge – without it, we wouldn’t be able to provide our customers the intelligence they need to determine if a security risk exists.
They go on to say that they expect RIM to continue this tradition with BlackBerry 10 and extending their support to that platform.
