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BlackBerry PlayBook First Tablet To Gain NIST Approval
An anonymous reader writes "Despite its current struggles to win over consumers, RIM has always been strong in the enterprise. The company remained steadfast in its support for corporate environments with the launch of the PlayBook, calling it the only business-grade tablet. The NIST is now ready to back that claim, giving the BlackBerry PlayBook its stamp of approval — meaning it's now the lone tablet that is certified for use in U.S. government agencies."
We in the Air Mobility Command â" think cargo jets â" have been looking at tablets for flight pubs and Jeppesen products. The iPad is without question out for various reasons. The two we have been looking at are the HP TouchPad, and the RIM product. The HP product has received better feedback, but because the RIM product already has the NIST approval (and the fact that the government is already in love with RIM), it is probably the direction we will go. Keep in mind that, of course, the air crew will still have to haul around the paper products, they just will not use them. Also, most of our guys already pack personal iPads, but they cannot be officially used for anything involving the actual operation of the aircraft.
I'm sure the DoD will buy them buy the many 1000's.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Is my business the only one ever to realise that blackberry stores your emails on their servers, and that the patriot act gives US government the right to read it? I don't understand why so many businesses overlook that.
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Not quite. But for once, the article isn't any more accurate than the Slashdot summary. The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS), which comes from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is a test of the encryption module of a device or software. In this case, it is RIM's proprietary OS that runs on the PlayBook that has had its crypto module validated (PlayBook FIPS certificate). Yes, it is probably the first tablet to achieve this, since most computers leverage Window's validated crypto module (Go here, FIPS certificates, and search for Microsoft). However, meeting FIPS is only part of the process. Federal regulation also requires National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP) certification and a test by an approved DoD test lab. After all of that, the device or software will probably be "certified for use in the U.S. government".
What does it matter if RIM is holding Encrypted emails that they don't have the key to decrypt? They don't overlook it, because there's nothing to overlook. The government doesn't have the keys to decrypt those messages either. Hence RIMs problems in middle east countries.
That whole affair with service in India proved that if they really want to, they can indeed decrypt the e-mails.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
which according to our tech people will not be fixed by Apple until sometime in 2012.
Apparently iOs devices will retry a failing password over and over locking out the account. Happened to me and they told me, next time I change my password on the network delete the network entry from my iPad and recreate it afterward. They determined my iPad spammed the network with my old password the moment I turned it on.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The last time we had a RIM/Blackberry discussion, I went on about what is good about RIM/Blackberry and what they are doing right. Suffice to say, they are all about business and getting things done.
In contrast, all the other things in the smartphone movement are about fun distractions and what new, innovative and original thing can be done next... oh yeah, and getting sued or suing over it. With tablets, the firs thing in most people's mind was "what do I need this for?" and the most common criticism was "this is just a bigger phone!" And almost ALL of this focuses attention on the client side of things.
RIM/Blackberry's idea is that the phone is one of two parts of the whole. The other part is the server side. It is the server side which integrates the client device with the business stuff. If you're not integrating with your business, whatever that is, you're not getting what you need where business is concerned.
iDevice and Android use the opposite approach where the client side is the only thing. This approach is fine for Apple, because Apple wants a piece of everything the users does or experiences. This approach is fine for Google because they are getting what they want from the user as well. But neither of things things care much about what business wants,
But the majority of people here will continue to chant "RIM/Blackberry is letting the world pass them by! They are dying and they don't even know it!" I just can't subscribe to that point of view. There no question that there is a huge market for consumer oriented devices which includes iThings and Androids and that market is booming (and will have an expected bust eventually).
But that's not the market RIM/Blackberry lives in. They live in business and government markets where the requirements are different and among these are reliability, predictability, stability, workability and a lot of things that utterly bore the consumer public. The consumer public is a collection if solitary individuals and they only need to work (or play) the way they want to and they crave different things and new things all of the time. Government and business are entities comprised of teams of people who need to be able to do things in concert with each other. Enabling that need over handheld mobile devices is a tremendous challenge that they have mostly been able to meet and continue to meet.
It's not hard to imagine what you would be able to do with a tablet over a phone where Blackberry is concerned. The ability of a tablet to deliver and interact with information is quite obvious and that's what Blackberry is for. And for many business people, it can easily replace their luggable laptops. What is harder to imagine is how tablets benefit consumers. For most, it is a new shiny thing to play with and they will realize before too long that they don't need to be burdened with the size/weight/fragility of the tablet devices when comparing that against the benefits they get from their use. (A consumer's ROI analysis.)
It's nice to say that the RIM tablet is the first tablet to gain NIST approval, but I suspect it will be the only tablet to gain NIST approval unless Apple or an Android maker gets into making business integration servers which integrate the handhelds with the enterprise which is hard to imagine. Apple has repeatedly demonstrated that they don't want to do business or government -- it's too heavy of a responsibility for them. Android makers are more beholden to the carriers than the consumer or any business. It is just unimaginable for the tide to change in that regard.
Just for the record:-
I think the name is intended to be a sports reference, to the list of set plays that a team develops ahead of time.
The use of metaphors referring to team sports is nearly universal in corporates and Fedland. "She's not a team player" is about the worst thing that could be said of someone. You're expected to "take one for the team" when your boss screws up. And so on.
So, in RIM's target market, "playbook" is intended to hook into key parts of the cult-ure.
If you don't include an e-mail client !!!!!
Really? I don't recall RIM capitulating on BES encryption, only BIS where they actually have access to the keys. BES is encrypted with keys not held by RIM, so how would RIM give them access? I suppose if you happen to crack the keys... but it's not like they're relying on encryption methods and key generation methods that aren't known... and there's a reason Governments force RIM to give them BIS access instead of just cracking it themselves...
And in terms of government and business, users are pretty much connected via BES, not BIS. Heck, even home users could theoretically roll their own BES setup if they wanted to (You can get free versions of BES, though of course the software and hardware that requires isn't exactly free)