More Secure = More Vulnerable?

By Ryan Majeau | Posted October 15th, 2011 in Faronics blogs for

Blackout BlackBerry week has been quite the roller coaster ride for over 70 million people worldwide. Lots of waiting around!

The service outage that’s spanned four continents has been blamed on “infrastructure problems”. The same systems that make the network so secure are what caused it to collapse. Nice.

BlackBerrys have dominated the corporate market for years. Research In Motion’s (RIM) network always beat out both Apple and Android. RIM makes sure your company’s data stays in the right hands—yours.

This is done by making all data take a detour through RIM’s data centers. Everything gets encrypted and routed to every device. The extra step means more security, but what happens when one of the data centers fail?

Traffic backlogs. Then another data center fails and more backlogs result. Then—well, you get the picture. What started in Europe led to a chain reaction of epic failure that spread worldwide. Fun!

One day of “off and on” service is one thing. A whole week is another. This isn’t 1990 when mobile phones didn’t exist. We’re in 2011. Phones are mobile and they’re used for everything. We need our phones! A lack of service makes them useless. All in the name of security? How does that make any sense?

Updates in iOS5 arguably bring the iPhone up to par with the security of BlackBerrys now. The new OS also coincides with the launch of the newest iPhone model yesterday.

The timing is perfect. Too perfect maybe?  If iPhones are just as secure now, will you switch? Is BBM and a keyboard really worth drops in service? For a week? The choice is yours.