BlackBerry sees convergence of endpoint management and protection as a plus

The next big thing, says BlackBerry, is convergence between endpoint management and endpoint protection. The company says that a single vendor can offer both management and security, and is very much in a position to take advantage of this trend.

At the BlackBerry World Tour 2019 in Singapore, Nigel Thompson, VP, Product Marketing, BlackBerry said, "We're in a unique position in the market in the type and breadth of the endpoints that we secure."

BlackBerry currently has over half a billion endpoints connected and protected. It also secures some 160 million cars.

BlackBerry's acquisition of Cylance has also brought it new market opportunities and solutions to a crowded and inefficient security market. The company completed the acquisition of Cylance in February 2019, and has benefitted from adding Cylance artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities into its portfolio.

"Our customers live in a high-security world. We need another level of sophistication," said Thompson, noting that companies are still suffering cybersecurity attacks despite installing cybersecurity protection.

BlackBerry says the factors key to successful management and protection are:

AI and ML capabilities

Thompson said that BlackBerry's security makes use of AI to make sure it is "human-nature proof", or the propensity of humans to find some way to get around the rules rather than obey them.

"If you keep tightening security policies you create so much friction for users, they are just going to work around what you install," he explained. BlackBerry's research has shown that:

- Ninety-four percent of respondents were not confident that their users were keeping their customer data safe

- Seventy-nine percent of users work around their corporate IT policies three to four times a week

- The average data breach costs US$2.4 million

Zero trust architecture, a new way to think about security where the motto is to "trust nothing, verify everything".

"Zero trust is our new operating principle," Thompson said. "The challenge is to balance security and productivity."

In the struggle to get from "zero trust" and "zero touch", AI can help with unsupervised learning, anomaly detection and deep learning, he added.

BlackBerry applies zero trust architecture with continuous and contextual authentication. The technology interacts with the user in real-time and is designed to help users remain secure yet productive. "I am the password to the device," Thompson explained.

Users are continuously being assessed as to whether they are genuine based on their behaviour and other measurements, then challenged to authenticate if necessary.

For example, AI can find and solve problems in real time, before a human has to be involved. Technology now being integrated into BlackBerry apps constantly monitors the environment to check if anything has changed. At the app level, a device can advise that there is malware found and asks to uninstall it.

The technology can also calculates a trust score through contextual information such as locations (office, home or other), behaviour at a location (pressure used, swiping methods, the way a device is held), time and usage, what network it is running on, and check device as well as app DNA to improve security and the user experience at the same time. It may then request biometric authentication when outside the office, but not when the user is at the office, or shut off access to sensitive corporate data if the user is outside of the country.