Research In Motion Ltd. on Monday announced that the company is working with the National Security Agency to support S/MIME (secure/multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) on the RIM BlackBerry wireless e-mail platform.
RIM is providing NSA with a customized version of BlackBerry software with S/MIME support, said officials at RIM in Waterloo, Ontario.
S/MIME is an e-mail security protocol designed to meet stringent security standards of government organizations. It extends the security of existing mail systems with writer-to-reader encryption and allows for secure communications among individuals in different organizations running similar or different e-mail systems.
For its non-government customers, the BlackBerry platform supports Triple DES encryption in the companys Enterprise Edition, which uses software that sits behind a customers corporate firewall.
RIMs Internet edition, which is hosted by a service provider and designed for individual users, sends data unencrypted.
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