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BlackBerry Buys Cybersecurity Firm Cylance For $1.4 Billion (securityweek.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the that's-a-lot-of-digits dept.

wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: BlackBerry on Friday announced that it has agreed to acquire endpoint security firm Cylance for $1.4 billion in cash. "We plan on immediately expanding the capabilities across BlackBerry's 'chip-to-edge' portfolio, including QNX, our safety-certified embedded OS that is deployed in more than 120 million vehicles, robot dogs, medical devices, and more," a BlackBerry company spokesperson told SecurityWeek. "Over time, we plan to integrate Cylance technology with our Spark platform, which is at the center of our strategy to ensure data flowing between endpoints (in a car, business, or smart city) is secured, private, and trusted." Cylance has raised roughly $300 million in funding [prior being acquired]. BlackBerry describes the "Spark platform" as a secure chip-to-edge communications platform "designed for ultra-security and industry-specific safety-certifications, such as ISO 26262 in automobiles."

34 comments

  1. Not what I would choose by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Cylance is a collection of top shelf niche software products.
    Blackbery thinks these all neatly fit in to their platform and they are so confident they put their own money behind it.
    Not only is that risky for Blackberry, it is a waste of Cylance's software that BB doesn't need or want to use.
    This is why blackberry hasn't been the market leader in a long time. Better would be a kind of joint venture/partnership. It would be a lot easier to finance.

  2. /. where is the love festival continues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    waves & smiles out to peoria, il 61603 not just another fairytail rumor mill, once known as one of the country's leading social studies status scoring barometers, based on the population's ability to coalesce in the center of the sway almost every time, regarding stuff relevant to both us sedentary & wandering unchosens, being like us themselves. with starvation & deception remaining as the leading killers of us, there may never be a better time to consider ourselves in relation to our surroundings, each other, & the unending life loving spirit we all can share, despite pretending otherwise? cease fire stand down.. there is no dispute that everything made by man fails? in the moms we trust.. creation is relatively foolproof, as time tells us? 'at that point they lay down their weapons, stand hand in hand, & gaze upwards into the cosmos'. the neverending greed fear ego based wmd on credit genocidal holycost never ends? see you here & there again & again then..?

  3. Where the heck did Blackberry get $1.4 billion? by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seriously, even the gov't and big corps don't use their stuff anymore.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:Where the heck did Blackberry get $1.4 billion? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Hey look what I found! $1.4 billion in unmarked bills! Let's buy a small country!" They must have been happier than a pig in slop

    2. Re:Where the heck did Blackberry get $1.4 billion? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      I was surprised they're still even a thing.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    3. Re:Where the heck did Blackberry get $1.4 billion? by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

      When are they buying Commodore?

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    4. Re:Where the heck did Blackberry get $1.4 billion? by guruevi · · Score: 1

      BlackBerry has been in use by governments and big enterprise for decades. They moved to the "security" and traffic inspection part of their platform. If you are a big corporation with government ties/oversight, BlackBerry systems on the backend of your email is practically a requirement since they're one of the few corporations that shares encryption keys with government agencies.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    5. Re:Where the heck did Blackberry get $1.4 billion? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      And why did they piss it away on these guys? Their AV software is some of the worst, I thinks everything is malware.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    6. Re:Where the heck did Blackberry get $1.4 billion? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Read the book about Enron...they had no problem gettings billions even when sinking like a rock!

    7. Re:Where the heck did Blackberry get $1.4 billion? by mysidia · · Score: 1

      They could pay for acquisitions with stock... BB's market cap is around 4.8 $ Billion, see 1.4 billion is approximately 30% of that.

    8. Re:Where the heck did Blackberry get $1.4 billion? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's why it usually ends first in antivirus performance comparisons. Sadly most enterprise standards for these tests don't take false positives into account. Currently, a program that simply does:
      int main(){
          printf("Virus!\n");
          return 0;
      }
      would be the perfect AV.

    9. Re:Where the heck did Blackberry get $1.4 billion? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      When Sega are ready to sell, which will be just after the GNU (sorry, GNU/Hurd) port of Sonic For Ever is released.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    10. Re:Where the heck did Blackberry get $1.4 billion? by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      They have a booming business in logistics tracking. Notably, in the modules that you can stick on trailers and containers and track them. They're popular because they are nearly zero-install (you practically stick them on the trailer) and you can see where your trailer is at all times.

      Normally you'd track the tractor and have something installed the cab, but those generally require a lot of installation work and antenna setup and all that (and the trucker might get a jammer). It's also a problem if you hire independents (owner-operators) who do not have your tracking equipment installed in their units.

      So shippers would stick it on their containers and track those things and it's completely independent of the shipper you use - even if the shipper doesn't know where their trucks are, you know where your container is.

  4. Robot dogs? by o_ferguson · · Score: 1

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    --
    - In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
  5. No zuckware allowed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The one phone that will NOT have Facebook on it. Just my outgoing calls, and voicemail. Maybe just Firefox, but my laptop ought to cover any surfing, maps, or video needs. Porsche Design, if I could.

    1. Re:No zuckware allowed by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      How's 2005 treating you?

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:No zuckware allowed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      no facebook
      no twitter
      no whatsapp
      no instasnapagram

      2018 is treating me just fine. how is big data treating you?

    3. Re:No zuckware allowed by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

      What the hell is a "call"?

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    4. Re:No zuckware allowed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Go back to digg.

  6. but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    can they make a phone?

    was a blackberry loyalist, and i shook my head with everything they did.

  7. Re: Where the heck did Blackberry get $1.4 billion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They are now effectively a patent troll.

  8. Re: Where the heck did Blackberry get $1.4 billio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    RIM was a huge endorser of Hillary Clinton. She would have mandated all Gov use Blackberries exclusively all while having a back door. In fact, the CEO explicitly stated all devices should have them.

    RIM is evil, avoid them!

  9. Canadian Technology! by Spy+Handler · · Score: 1

    Canadian Technology! (raises fist with blackberry in hand)

  10. In other news ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    ... I bought a security light for my carport.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  11. Cant believe this. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1
    Blackberry still has 1.4 billion dollars left in it?

    Come on, by this time Criminal XYZ Officers should have looted the coffers completely. It goes without saying they were incompetent in managing the company. Comes as a surprise they were incompetent in looting the company and lining their own pockets.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  12. We are having Cylance forced on us at work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Jesus, the thing is a pain in the ass. False positives out the wazoo, and performance sucks. For every false positive, we are expected to create a "ticket" and they will create exceptions for us. The problem is that there are a lot of them.

    1. Re: We are having Cylance forced on us at work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What type of company are you? We'd heard this anecdotally from others, so am curious your size/sector/geo

    2. Re:We are having Cylance forced on us at work. by guruevi · · Score: 1

      I haven't seen many false positives. Not sure what programs you're running but everything being blocked is actually doing something weird and supposed to be blocked. It also sounds like your support structure sucks which is probably why you are having the issues after deployment.

      It's a ton better than Sophos or Symantec though.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    3. Re:We are having Cylance forced on us at work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you in software development? Unfinished/small/debug-compiled programs almost always give a false positive on Cylance. I guess because they trained their ML model on a lot of different release versions of software.

      Try to compile a simple MessageBoxA hello world with mingw, it will be detected as malware :)

    4. Re: We are having Cylance forced on us at work. by xeos · · Score: 1

      Agree completely. Cylance is completely junk for small executables, and they have zero interest in fixing it.

    5. Re: We are having Cylance forced on us at work. by ennis99 · · Score: 1

      why waste so much money because they want to "strengthen" security? they should instead invest money to better position themselves in the smartphone market by upgrading their phones, instead of throwing a similar amount to buy "Cylance". This step does not mean anything in my opinion. https://getappvalley.com/ https://tutuappx.com/ https://tweakbox.mobi/

  13. Re: Where the heck did Blackberry get $1.4 billion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you have driven a car lately it probably has BlackBerry's Qnx in the infotainment system. It is used in Audi, BMW, Ford, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar Land Rover, KIA, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Toyota, and Volkswagen.

  14. Re: Where the heck did Blackberry get $1.4 billi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Taking a page from IBM, Blackberry tries to buy their way to relevancy.

  15. Re: Where the heck did Blackberry get $1.4 billion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They have had over 3 billion in CASH for, like, forever. That's not even counting IP and other assets. They're not, and have never been, as dead as people imply. They don't only sell smartphones, they have continued to far outsell anyone else in the MDM market, even before they bought their next biggest competitor a few years back.