Germany Bans BlackBerry, iPhone for Security Reasons

The German government has advised ministers not to use BlackBerry and iPhone devices due to “a dramatic increase of attacks against” its networks.

A general ban on the use of smartphones in certain German ministries is also being considered, Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière confirmed to the country’s business daily newspaper Handelsblatt yesterday.

He said that ministers and senior civil servants had been told to instead use Simko2 gadgets offered by T-Systems, following advice from the German federal office for information security (BSI).

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BERLIN: “We have a dramatic increase of attacks against our networks, especially against government networks,” says the Minister trading sheet. Therefore, “the Government must be very careful to protect their own network effect.”

In this context, is also the decision of the Interior to advise against the use of BlackBerry handsets by Minister of the Federal Government and the Federal Assembly: “The BlackBerry Infrastructure is a closed proprietary system. Standard access to our networks but needs to determine the government itself and not a private company. Each organization should make such a security assessment in the context of risk management. “Everyone must be able to assess risk themselves – the state itself and the economy itself,” said de Maizière the Handelsblatt.

The security the SPD, Sebastian Edathy suggested that a general ban on the use of smartphones in certain ministries. “All must abide by the warnings. It would be negligent if caused by an incorrect use of a security risk to the government work, “said Edathy the” Bild “-Zeitung. The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) had warned iPhone because of security concerns against the use of BlackBerrys by the Canadian manufacturer Research in Motion or Apple’s. The Authority recommends that only the “Simko2” the telecom wholesale division T-Systems for data traffic.

de Maizière has the other ministries as early as 19 November 2009 advised in a letter to renounce the use of both BlackBerrys and iPhones. The background was the increasing number of attacks on the electronic information and communication networks.

RIM is currently negotiating with several governments on the data control on the BlackBerry. States such as Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates have massive security concerns and want to ban the services or at least limit.