As if its rapidly dwindling fortunes in the last few years have not been enough, Blackberry could be on course to losing one of its most high profile clients: the White House (which is my way of saying US President Barack Obama). The US President is widely known for his love for the Canadian manufacturer’s devices and the White House staff being concerned about security just like any other government agencies around the world, only have Blackberry devices certified for such high profile use.
This could change soon as the security teams at the White House are said to be reviewing their security measures to include new devices from Samsung and LG. In fact, they are under testing internally.
As per a report posted today by the Wall Street Journal, the White House’s internal technology team and the White House Communications Agency are in early stages of testing devices made by LG and Samsung even though there are no public plans of making the switch from Blackberry. However, this means a lot and if all goes well then the implementation may happen in a couple of months.
Blackberry smartphones have always outscored the competition on security matters and have for long been very trusted by government agencies and a large segment of the enterprise market but that is quickly changing. Samsung has in recent years made a strong push to add extra security features to its devices and even managed to get its flagship device last year (the Galaxy S4) to be officially certified by the Pentagon.
Its Knox security software has now been rolled out to all its high end devices with a refresh of the same arriving with the Galaxy S5 to improve on the earlier version of the software. LG on the other hand has been said to be prepping its own advanced security software, GATE, to compete with Knox for the enterprise.
Android, the platform on which both Samsung and LG base their flagship devices on, has come under increased criticism in recent days due to its apparent vulnerability to malware. Though most of these threats have been grossly exaggerated, it makes sense that most have never felt “secure enough” using Android-powered devices.
The likes of Samsung have gone ahead to address the enterprise market’s concerns by making clear the blurred line between work and play on devices with Knox and adding a security layer in the process. Google on the other hand, has had the daunting task of making Android secure with more and more updates and changes in security policies to address how developers’ apps interact with devices.
Source: Wall Street Journal
