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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.
You forgot to mention that they only have a level 1 certification - which is the bare minimum set of requirements. The security library was developed by Certicom, - known as the "Security Builder FIPS Module."
Getting it certified was really just using the existing certification on a new platform - which only requires a security policy update, some known answer tests, and a run through of the self-testing framework (in some cases - the NIST is funny about that). No code review and not a lot of approved lab time is required for a platform port as long as the hardware is similar and software stays the same.
That's how they got it in and out of NIST in 3 months!
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.