German government approves BlackBerry’s acquisition of Secusmart

BlackBerry is now free to integrate German security vendor Secusmart’s voice encryption technology on its smartphones and software, after the German government approved its acquisition of the company. BlackBerry CEO John Chen still wants his company to be the first choice of CIOs that want nothing but the best security as he works to turn around the company’s fortunes. The acquisition of Secusmart lets the company add the capability to encrypt voice and data communication to government security standards.

The German government has signed off BlackBerry’s acquisition of the German company Secusmart, according to local media (Google Translate). Secusmart is the company that develops software and hardware to protect government phones, including the “Merkel Phone” used by Chancellor Angela Merkel. She moved to a more secure device after it came out that the National Security Agency had been monitoring her communications. “The German government has examined the planned purchase of Secusmart by Blackberry and given its approval for it to go ahead,” an economy ministry spokeswoman said on Friday, according to Reuters. Back in July 2014, the Canadian handset maker announced that it would acquire the Düsseldorf-based company. In order to get Berlin’s approval, BlackBerry apparently had to agree to a number of government demands. It was required to give full access of its source code to the the German information security agency, known by its German acronym, BSI.