BlackBerry on Thursday announced Secure Work Spaces for iOS and Android, a security feature available on BlackBerry 10 devices which puts a wall between personal and work data.
Secure Work Spaces broadens the multi-platform mobile device management (MDM) support for iOS and Android that BlackBerry (when it was known as RIM) used to deliver with Mobile Fusion. It added multi-platform support after acquiring MDM technology from German company Ubitexx in 2011.
In 2011, RIM also launched Balance, a Fusion service for BlackBerry devices that helped administrators provide access to corporate data while preventing leaks to Facebook and other personal services.
Fusion was replaced by BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES)10 in late January, ahead of the company’s rebranding as BlackBerry and launch of BB10 OS devices (the Q10 and Z10).
Balance however was retained as a BES 10 service and also built into the core of BB10 OS.
“With Secure Work Space for iOS and Android devices, we're extending as many of these features as possible to other platforms, critical in today’s Bring Your Own Device world,” said David J Smith, EVP, Enterprise Mobile Computing.
Features included are: secured client applications for email, calendar, contacts, tasks, memos, secure browsing and document editing for each device that is provisioned via BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, according to BlackBerry.
Administrators will also be able to configure, secure, wipe, and interact with the Secure Work Space.
Secure Work Spaces, which is still in a closed beta, won’t have the same level of integration the Balance has with BB10. For example, it won’t include BB10‘s Balance Hub, a feature that offers BlackBerry devices merged views of work and personal data.
Secure Work Spaces will be added to BES 10 via an update scheduled before the end of the second quarter of calendar 2013.
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