Fixmo and BlackBerry partner to bring sentinel device integrity and tamper detection solution to BlackBerry 10
STERLING, VA and WATERLOO,– Fixmo, a leading provider of mobile security and risk management solutions, and BlackBerry® (NASDAQ: BBRY; TSX: BB) today announced plans to bring the Fixmo Sentinel device integrity verification and tamper detection solution to the BlackBerry® 10 platform. Fixmo Sentinel is used today throughout the U.S. Federal Government to meet the Security Technical Implementation Guidelines (STIGs) for mobile device deployments. Today’s announcement expands on a collaborative effort between Fixmo and BlackBerry that began in 2009.
Developed under a Co-operative Research and Development Agreement with the U.S. National Security Agency, Fixmo Sentinel helps IT organizations ensure mobile devices start, and remain, in a known trusted state and within corporate compliance. Fixmo will offer a fully integrated version of Fixmo Sentinel for BlackBerry 10 smartphones that will enable Government agencies and Enterprise customers to track and audit all system-level and application-level modules residing on each smartphone. Enterprises and government customers will be able to proactively detect the installation of unverified or disallowed third party software and undesired changes to software configurations or settings, as well as attempts at malicious tampering or rooting of the operating system.
“BlackBerry 10 continues to be well received by government agencies and large enterprises looking to embrace the next wave of mobility in the workplace without compromising security or regulatory compliance,” said Scott Totzke, Senior Vice President, BlackBerry Security Group at BlackBerry. “Our collaboration with Fixmo is another important step in providing our government, DoD, and enterprise customers with the tools they need to meet stringent security and compliance requirements as they expand their use of mobile technologies and applications.”
Through a collaborative development project, Fixmo and BlackBerry are working to ensure that Fixmo Sentinel for BlackBerry 10 meets the evolving DoD STIG and Security Requirements Guide (SRG) specifications for mobile device management developed by the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). The development project builds on the existing relationship between the two companies that began in 2009 as a collaborative effort to bring the NSA-developed AutoBerry technology to BlackBerry® 7 smartphones across the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).
“BlackBerry is a critical platform for our government and enterprise customers, and we’re seeing wide- spread demand for Fixmo Sentinel on BlackBerry 10 smartphones,” said Bruce Gilley, President of Fixmo U.S. “We’re thrilled to be partnering with BlackBerry to deliver a tightly integrated version of Fixmo Sentinel that will enable our mutual customers to maximize their use of BlackBerry 10 smartphones while mitigating security and compliance risks.”
Fixmo Sentinel for BlackBerry 10 will be available to U.S. Government agencies as part of an exclusive Technology Preview program later this year. To learn more about Fixmo Sentinel, and to register for updates on availability for BlackBerry 10, please visit http://fixmo.com/products/sentinel.
About Fixmo
Fixmo Inc. is the mobile risk management company that helps organizations identify, mitigate and manage the risks associated with mobile devices in the workplace. The company’s MRM solutions enable protected and compliant mobile computing, helping organizations embrace a wide range of mobile devices and applications while maintaining system integrity, protecting confidential data and proving regulatory compliance. Fixmo’s MRM technology has been developed as part of a Co-operative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Fixmo is headquartered in Sterling, Virginia and Toronto, Canada (http://fixmo.com).
About BlackBerry
A global leader in wireless innovation, BlackBerry® revolutionized the mobile industry when it was introduced in 1999. Today, BlackBerry aims to inspire the success of our millions of customers around the world by continuously pushing the boundaries of mobile experiences. Founded in 1984 and based in Waterloo, Ontario, BlackBerry operates offices in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America.
BlackBerry is listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market (NASDAQ: BBRY) and the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: BB). For more information, visit www.blackberry.com.
Kara Yi
BlackBerry Media Relations [email protected] (519) 404-3291
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Related story:
Mozilla and BlackBerry collaborate on fuzzing
Security on mobile platforms is being advanced through Mozilla and BlackBerry collaborating on advanced automated security testing techniques known as fuzzing.
Mozilla and BlackBerry’s work on security research techniques are in the area of fault injection. Fault injection (also known as “fuzzing”) is a method of automated security testing that is used to identify potential security concerns that can be fixed before users are at risk. Fault injection is a testing technique where specially designed software is created to inject a variety of unexpected or malformed data into a specific application, program or area of code. The goal is to uncover areas where the software does not properly handle the malformed data. Through fault injection it is possible to identify potential security weaknesses that can be proactively addressed before there is ever a threat to users.
The specific area of joint research is Peach v2, an open source fuzzing framework and will also include joint work on other fuzzing software. Mozilla and BlackBerry are working together to advance the Peach fuzzing software for testing Web browsers. We will also collaborate on fuzzing techniques and approaches to jointly raise the security protections provided to our users.
Mozilla has successfully used Peach to perform fuzz testing against HTML5 features such as: image formats, audio/video formats, fonts, multimedia APIs like WebGL and WebAudio and most recently protocols used in WebRTC. Through our testing, we’ve proactively identified issues that can be fixed before there was any risk to our users. This testing has proved to be very effective and is helping secure Firefox and Firefox OS users.
BlackBerry has long relied on large-scale automated testing to identify security issues across its platform. The collaboration with Mozilla plugs directly into BlackBerry’s existing security processes and infrastructure. BlackBerry regularly uses third-party fuzzers, in addition to its own proprietary fuzzing tools, static analysis and vulnerability research, in order to identify and address potential security concerns across its portfolio of products and services.
Adrian Stone, Director of BlackBerry Security Response and Threat Analysis, shared that he is excited about the work Mozilla and BlackBerry researchers are conducting and the potential benefits for customers. He said, “Security is an industry-wide challenge that cannot be solved in a vacuum, and that is why BlackBerry and Mozilla security researchers are working together to develop new and innovative tools for detecting browser threats before they can affect both mobile and desktop customers. Through this collaboration, BlackBerry and Mozilla are working together towards the common goal of advancing security protections for customers as well as improving the threat landscape overall.”
Mozilla and BlackBerry have worked together on fuzzing activities in the past and both recognize the importance of continued automated security testing techniques in order to protect users on the open Web.
