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Sony employees resort to BlackBerry phones after hacker comms shutdown

Communications are critical and when Sony was shut down by cyber attacks they ended up finding help in an archived collection of BlackBerry phones.
Written by Matthew Miller, Contributing Writer

BlackBerry has always been known for their enterprise security and it sounds like it may be a good idea to keep one around in case of emergency.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Inside BlackBerry has the details, Sony employees found some BlackBerry phones after hackers shut the company down. Sony executives were able to communicate using the BlackBerrys while the payroll department cut paychecks manually.

The fact that these BlackBerry devices were still able to connect to a BES or a BIS that wasn't hacked is rather impressive. It was reported that Sony's internal systems were down, so a BIS may have provided the means to communicate. Details on the server end were not provided in the story.

I actually went back to using my BlackBerry Passport for a few days over the holidays and still think it is one of the most efficient phones ever for centralized communications. Mine is connected via an Exchange Server and not a BES so if my company was shut down a BlackBerry wouldn't help.

Given the growing concerns over cyber attacks and other violations of privacy, do you think people will reconsider BlackBerry in 2015?

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