[chickenman18]

I think the best way to market something is to make sure your product solves a common problem. With all the talk of leaked emails, stolen pictures and so forth, you would think that Blackberry could rustle up a few famous people that have been hacked and have them say...
"I should have used a Blackberry!"
I could see many a Hollywood starlet that could potentially serve in that regard.

Posted via the CrackBerry App for Android

[Sairos]

You think they'll say I should've used a BlackBerry for free?.. That's for celebrities.. Now you've big time CEOs getting their accounts hacked, Mark Zuckerberg definitely doesn't need to get paid.. Also he'll never say that punch line xD..

Forget about all of that.. How would using a BlackBerry would've stopped their accounts from getting hacked... They used weak passwords and some of them used the same password on several accounts.. If the solution is to use a BlackBerry, believe me BlackBerry would've been used by a lot of people..

Preventing the hacking of your accounts has to do more with your behavior and the passwords you use, not your choice of smartphone. These people use PCs too, so its not a discussion of phones.. Your accounts are not linked to mobiles only..

[chickenman18]

Well if Blackberry can't be a solution to a problem, then what's their reason for being?

Posted via the CrackBerry App for Android

[chickenman18]

I forgot to add.... I never said that these people would have to say the tagine for free. I understand that there is a cost involved.

Posted via the CrackBerry App for Android

[Sairos]

I forgot to add.... I never said that these people would have to say the tagine for free. I understand that there is a cost involved.

Posted via the CrackBerry App for Android

Exactly, BlackBerry can't afford that cost.. They can't afford to market the devices because they would lose money on them.. They're in a critical position right now and they can't afford to market their own devices, let alone using celebrities in marketing.

You've different solutions to market your devices with low cost.. Like Social media marketing, marketing directly to corporations & govs, etc.... That's what Chinese manufactures do to cut their costs and sell for cheap (Excluding Govs & Corps).

You're now in a position in which you HAVE to do cheap marketing.. So celebrities are out of the question.. Its the unfortunate state that we reached.

[parryberry]

BB doesn't really have the resources to do marketing. Also security is not really what the average person is interested in a phone unfortunately. Dtek50 could start to change things. We'll see.

[app_Developer]

There are security and privacy issues that using a BB phone would solve, but that doesn't mean BB users have complete immunity against all problems. There are vulnerabilities that we all have almost regardless of which phone we use. So BB would have to be very careful about choosing cases where their phones would have actually made a difference.

That's tricky. Tricky things are hard to summarize in an ad.

[app_Developer]

Well if Blackberry can't be a solution to a problem, then what's their reason for being?

For the same reason you avoid unhealthy foods or wear a seatbelt. Neither will make you immortal, but they do improve your chances of living a long healthy life.

[donnation]

A great idea except that BB wouldn't have prevented those hacks from happening. It's like if PayPal got hacked by getting people's passwords. Using a blackberry wouldn't have prevented a celebrity from their Paypal account being hacked any more than using any other phone.

[mvsalvino]

I've said it before in these forums, but I honestly think BlackBerry should offer BES as a subscription cloud service like Office365 or Google Apps.

Charge like $10/device/month. See small and medium sized businesses flock to it. Then offer free or discounted BES subscription price for BlackBerry phones.

Buy a BlackBerry, get a free managed BES user account with it. Can't get any better value added security. And couldn't make it any more attractive as a fleet phone.

 C L A S S I C

[Troy Tiscareno]

I've said it before in these forums, but I honestly think BlackBerry should offer BES as a subscription cloud service like Office365 or Google Apps.

They do... but the majority of the benefits that BES offers as far as security goes (in other words, separate from device management) only works if your business hosts its own email, file, and application servers, because that's how it was designed to work - because that's what all corporate infrastructure was 15 years ago when BB started working on BES - and it's still how most enterprise-level businesses work.

But small/medium businesses don't have that infrastructure (or need it, in most cases), so they reap very little security benefit from BES beyond secure BBM.

That's the thing about security - it isn't something you can buy, it's something you have to BUILD and MAINTAIN and constantly work at as a company, and if your company isn't all-in, either out of choice or out of need or out of lack-of-funds, then something like BES really isn't going to help you and isn't going to be of much benefit-for-the-dollar for you either.

As others have pointed out, you can have the very best security on your phone, but if you use "1234" as your PIN, or "password" as your password, or use the same password for every account, then all of that security that people worked so hard to build isn't going to stop anyone. It's like paying huge money to have a vault door installed as your front door, but never actually SHUTTING the door because you want to feel the breeze. Well, criminals will still get in, and it isn't because your vault door wasn't well designed or well constructed (or not worth the money it cost) - it's because the user/owner was stupid.

In the case of iCloud being hacked, the phones themselves were plenty secure, but Apple implemented their otherwise excellent security with one really stupid lapse that created a simple exploit that folks took advantage of. But it was purely a server attack, not an attack on phones themselves.

The truth is, almost no one is going to bother to hack a single phone unless that person is a high-value target to begin with - there's just not enough valuable information on a single phone compared to, say, a company's servers where millions of credit card numbers are stored, or where millions of photos, videos, and documents are stored. Those attacks have a "return on investment" that is many, many orders of magnitude greater than hacking a single phone - and that's why they're the focus of most attacks.

[chickenman18]

So then a question I have is this:
What additional security is Blackberry attempting to promote over other Android devices with the Priv and the Dtek50?
Is it simply an app safety monitor? How about the hardened kernel that they speak of? What purpose does that serve?
Thanks for your patience folks. And thank you for your informative responses.

Posted via the CrackBerry App for Android

[Troy Tiscareno]

So then a question I have is this:
What additional security is Blackberry attempting to promote over other Android devices with the Priv and the Dtek50?
Is it simply an app safety monitor? How about the hardened kernel that they speak of? What purpose does that serve?
Thanks for your patience folks. And thank you for your informative responses.

BB has made their phone non-rootable, and adds checks during boot-up that ensures that all OS files have been signed with BB's encryption key (and thus haven't been modified), so that only BB-signed files will run. They've used a different hardened kernel (grsecurity, info here, while Google is using SELinux). And they're integrating and releasing Google's monthly security patches very quickly.

But there are hundreds, if not thousands, of vectors of attacks for a smartphone, and those measures only deal with a dozen or two. Most of the others are handled by the Android OS itself, by the Play Store (checking apps for known and suspected exploits and other weird behavior), and most importantly, by proper end-user security practices. And that last one is the one most likely to be thwarted - by users themselves who don't want to be inconvenienced by security.

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

So then a question I have is this:
What additional security is Blackberry attempting to promote over other Android devices with the Priv and the Dtek50?
Is it simply an app safety monitor? How about the hardened kernel that they speak of? What purpose does that serve?
Thanks for your patience folks. And thank you for your informative responses.

Posted via the CrackBerry App for Android

What purpose does it really all server? That's the real issue.

For an average consumer that never unlocks the "Unknown Sources" for app installations, never roots their phone and doesn't even password lock their phone (most use the fingerprint reader or nothing).... It's hard to say what BlackBerry's security would do for them.

But for enterprise and goverment IT departments, in the end the PRIV and DTEK50 will probably receive some higher security classification that on paper will look better and meet some minimum requirements. Thus giving BlackBerry and edge in that very niche market. Thus any marketing of security is only going to focus on those niche customers.

Consumers and BlackBerry security have been a no Sale for as long as I've been here.... people bought BlackBerry for push email, and lower cost data plans.

[donnation]

people bought BlackBerry for push email, and lower cost data plans.

And once upon a time, BBM.

[Sairos]

And once upon a time, BBM.

Pretty much everyone around me bought it for BBM and the amazing texting experience with the PKB.

[mvsalvino]

Back on the topic of marketing security... I think one of the best features of BlackBerry android is the speedy security updates. This is actually a huge deal considering how most android phones nowadays might see one or two updates over the course of their lives.

But I don't think BlackBerry is marketing that hard enough. I'm not sure if BBDroid has an antivirus or vulnerability/malware database of sorts (I would imagine it does to some degree). If so, BlackBerry should make an attempt to push definition updates daily. Notify the user when definitions get updates. This way users, and even shorter term users of devices such as review units or in-store display units, can visibly see security that other phones don't have.

It's all about making the security appear tangible to the user. DTEK app does this well, but is not enough. Visible daily updates would be even better.

 C L A S S I C

[Bbnivende]

And once upon a time, BBM.

And the iconic PKB form factor.

[stevobbm]

I would use the politicians approach, FEAR.

It works.

Via Passport 

[Prem WatsApp]

�   There's a Crack in the Berry right now...   �

[thurask]

But there are hundreds, if not thousands, of vectors of attacks for a smartphone, and those measures only deal with a dozen or two. Most of the others are handled by the Android OS itself, by the Play Store (checking apps for known and suspected exploits and other weird behavior), and most importantly, by proper end-user security practices. And that last one is the one most likely to be thwarted - by users themselves who don't want to be inconvenienced by security.

Exactly this, no matter which platform or how "secure" it says it is on the box. You just can't patch stupid.

[donnation]

It still amazes me that people in here think because Blackberry emphasizes security so much that they can do whatever they want on their phones and not have to worry about it. Its the equivalent of saying: The window to my car is half way open and I have a lot of money out in the open for everyone to see but I don't have to worry about people breaking into my car because I'm using a Blackberry.

It makes absolutely no sense.