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The landscape for espionage targeting armed forces personnel has shifted with ubiquitous mobile phone use.
BlackBerry is celebrating 40 years of operations this year, and whilst the public still fondly remembers the keyboard-based mobile phones and secure messaging networks of the previous era, BlackBerry has been methodically transforming its organisation into a global cybersecurity and critical communications company.
Governments around the world have taken notice.
All of the G12 governments, the Five Eyes intelligence alliance and the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCI Agency) have all approved BlackBerry’s technology for use in secure communications; from Government Sensitive, to Top Secret.
“We are proud of our global track record for providing certified, true end-to-end encrypted solutions to government and military agencies. However, on its own, it is not the complete picture.
Secure communications must be supported by systems that enhance their effectiveness. Streamlining urgent communications, managing mass responses, and coordinating people and resources are what truly makes a difference in crisis response.”
- Ramon Pinero, General Manager, BlackBerry AtHoc
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Case in Point: The Recent “The Blue Screen of Death”
Take the example of a recent global IT outage that left many organisations scrambling. While traditional communication channels went offline, BlackBerry’s business, and government and military customers equipped with BlackBerry® AtHoc® were able to maintain more seamless operations.
Critical instructions and updates reached thousands of personnel in real time, ensuring that situational awareness and on-the-ground decision-making was relatively uninterrupted.
Aside from projecting confidence that they were already in solution mode, the ability to quickly gather feedback from thousands of affected personnel helped provide valuable information to inform and support decisions.
When it was time to turn timely decisions into real world actions, AtHoc’s flexibility helped facilitate highly targeted communication. Whether the need was to alert all personnel of a status update for a fix, or deliver specific messages to select teams based on their roles, AtHoc ensured the right people received the right information at the right time.
This kind of quick resilience is particularly vital for defence forces, where a lack of timely communication can lead to poor decision making and mission failure.
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Evolving Security Considerations for Military Personnel
In military and defence contexts, secure and reliable communication channels used to be somewhat easier to manage, contain and control. In more recent years, the explosion of connected consumer devices, unchecked increases in sensitive data storage (often without user awareness) and ability to remotely exploit vulnerabilities has now opened up the attack surface for greater levels of eavesdropping and espionage.
We’ve all seen examples in the news about the life & death consequences of insecure and intercepted communications in the ongoing conflict in Russia and Ukraine. Beyond the active battlefield, defence force personnel, at every level, now have an expanded set of considerations so as not to inadvertently share information with enemies and adversaries.
These generally fall into three risk categories:
- Eavesdropping over public and foreign networks
- Identity spoofing
- Metadata collection and mining
BlackBerry’s SecuSUITE addresses these risks with advanced protection measures that are not common in standard apps.
- End-to-end encryption throughout the Solution Architecture
- Cryptographic proof of identity
- Granular controls over users and data retention
“In recent years, we have seen expansive use of technology capabilities in warfare, including interception, spyware and espionage to spy on mobile communications. When classified or sensitive information is shared, a phone call or message is often placed with the assumption the audience is known, when in fact, information is constantly being mined and stored away by cybercriminals and state-sponsored threat groups.
In today’s digital world, we know the enemy never sleeps, hence why it is so critical to close all open back doors to fortify national security. This can be achieved with military-grade solutions that encrypt and secure one-to-one and group voice calls, messages, file exchange and group chats across international networks in a way that makes it far easier for personnel to comply with the use of approved systems.”
- David Wiseman, Vice President Secure Communications, BlackBerry
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No Need for Special Hardware
Usability considerations are not just the domain of tech companies and service providers. Individuals have both rational and emotional connections to their devices and are often reluctant to part with them or switch them off.
BlackBerry’s SecuSUITE is designed with this consideration in mind and provides the necessary protection on widely available consumer devices running on Android™ and iOS®. There is no need for special hardware to be issued, so roll out and adoption is both more cost-effective and simplified.
There is no need to abandon or segment a ‘preferred’ device. The familiar usability of common operating systems is maintained, and the secure communications layer gets adopted into the device.
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Hands On Demonstrations
BlackBerry will be at Land Forces 2024 (11-13 September in Melbourne) and will be demonstrating two of the key systems from its portfolio to show how Secure Communications and Critical Event Management work together. SecuSUITE and AtHoc
Stop by Booth #J024 and let the BlackBerry team show you how their Secure
Communications portfolio supports Defence Forces around the world.
If you are not able to make it to this year’s Land Forces Exhibition, head over to blackberry.com and you can easily request to speak with an expert via their online form.
