A number of companies and, as it seems, several Governmental agencies or ministries would, according to different sources, have decided to forbid - or severely limit - the use of the very popular Blackberry device, which allows for GSM/GPRS email reading. Staffs in charge of security have decided to take this very seriously, and the topic came on the table in France at a recent session of the Institute for National Defence (Institut des Hautes Etudes de Defense Nationale).
Blackberry has been blooming like flowers in the spring, and this bears some risks, notably of so-called "intrusions from outside".
Several administrations in France, as well as sevreal companies have limited access for some of their staffs. The situation is that, thanks to its technology, the device can show the same weakness, for its transmissions, than any GSM using machine. What security personnels complain about is, however, that all mail are transiting through servers that are located outside of France, thus out of any control from the administration or the company.Research In Motion (RIM), the company producing the Blackberry says that one hundred pct of the traffic is encrypted, and so can be the information which is dropped on the server. Indeed, an external audit has been released by independent co. @Stake that concludes that "Blackberry is actually offering the same level of security than any VPN (Virtual Private Network"), the only condition being to have thought about encryption before implementation.
The Australian Government has, through its Defence Signals Directorate, barred all confidential goivernmental documents to be transmitted through Blackberry. In addition, it requests that the version used de-activates the peer-to-peer option, web cleint or automatic re-direction.
This underlines the fact that the convergence between mobile, fixed systems of all sorts using wireless networks may be at risk. Obviously, this is not a concern for someone who listens to music at home after downloading it from the Internet. But the quaetion is: Where does confidentiality starts?