BlackBerry Enterprise Server

Research In Motion announced this week that latest BlackBerry 7 devices have been granted Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 certification by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC).

The 140-2 certification is recognized by the U.S. and Canadian governments and is required under the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 for devices to be used by government employees.

RIM has long produced extremely secure smartphones, which is why it has been the platform of choice financial and government workers for a decade. RIM’s PlayBook also achieved government clearance last summer making it the first tablet to get a security clearance.

Details of RIM’s press release can be found here.

Details of the security features of the BlackBerry smartphone can be found here.

This article explains how to locate and change the SRP ID and SRP Authentication Key using the BlackBerry® Administration Service or BlackBerry® Manager.

To locate the SRP ID and SRP Authentication Key in the BlackBerry Configuration Database and the Cached Property file see KB02632.

To locate the SRP ID on the BlackBerry® smartphone, see KB05508.

During an SRP ID and SRP Authentication Key change the BlackBerry® Enterprise Server must successfully send a switch service command to all devices, resend IT Policy to all devices, and resend all Desktop Service Books to all devices.  This process can take up to 4 hours to complete and the BlackBerry Enterprise Server should not be restarted for at least 4 hours after the SRP ID and SRP Authentication key have been changed. continue

A reset of a BlackBerry smartphone is a troubleshooting method that completely turns off and restarts the BlackBerry smartphone’s operating system software and applications. It is a useful first step if a BlackBerry smartphone is experiencing hardware, software, or wireless network problems.

Note: A reset of a BlackBerry smartphone does not delete any settings or data. continue

Synchronising the contacts and calendar through BlackBerry Desktop Software to Outlook is easy to do, and allows the user to keep both their device and Outlook up to date with any changes.

Before you start, make a back-up of the handset. continue

Research In Motion have sent out notification that they will be pulling support for the BlackBerry Monitoring Service on 16th February 2012, and are suggesting that those companies that use the service in their BES to look for 3rd party solutions.

The reasoning behind the move is that there are 3rd party solutions that better address customers’ needs, and RIM advise companies to check available alternatives with BlackBerry partners. continue

Research In Motion has announced a new enterprise mobility solution called BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, and in doing so, has entered into the multi-platform Mobile Device Management marketplace.

BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, currently in the early stages of being beta tested, will simplify the management of not just BlackBerrys and PlayBooks, but also phones and tablets running Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS operating systems. Basically this will bring the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and new management capabilities of PlayBooks together with management of Android and iPhones under one solution. continue

Research In Motion announced this week BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365 – a new RIM-hosted online service for mid-sized businesses and enterprises that extends Microsoft Exchange Online to BlackBerry smartphones, and allows organisations to self-manage their BlackBerry deployments in the cloud. An open beta for the service is launching today in over 30 countries. continue

After testing in the Beta Zone, RIM have released an update of BlackBerry App World, version 3.0.1.29.

This latest update seems to have fixed a lot of issues including performance and UI enhancements, elimination of erroneous multiple update requests, optimizing memory usage and increased stability.

Users should soon receive a notification in the next few days. However it can be downloaded on the handset by accessing  RIM’s official BlackBerry App World download page and selecting Download it Today.

From today until the end of the year, RIM has offered a selection of premium apps to download for free to users’ BlackBerrys, as an apology for last week’s outage.

RIM’s CEO, Mike Lazaridis said, in a press release “We truly appreciate and value our relationship with our customers.  We’ve worked hard to earn their trust over the past 12 years, and we’re committed to providing the high standard of reliability they expect, today and in the future.” continue

BlackBerry services buzzed back to life Thursday after a three-day outage that interrupted email messages and Internet services for millions of customers.

BlackBerry users around the world have faced huge problems over the past few days getting and receiving emails and messages, as well as launching Internet services. continue