What's After Wiping?

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Despite the problems that BlackBerry has with being TOO SECURE for the governments of UAE, India and Saudi Arabia, the company continues to develop its security features and protections for users, particularly enterprise users. And with 4G network services and cool smartphones ever more powerful and plentiful, it seems that the data inside these phones is more valuable and more personal than ever. We keep calendars filled with meeting times, important contact numbers, videos and audio files, email addresses, and most importantly, emails and text messages that our employer would likely prefer to stay private.

One of the most important enterprise features is the remote wipe capability.

Now imagine that you, a humble consumer lost, misplaced, or even got your $300+ phone filled with this invaluable information stolen. This would spark a horrible couple of weeks for most of us and the risk of identity theft for some, and of course the pain of buying and training the replacement device.

However, RIM, with a not-yet-in-production service called BlackBerry Protect leverages a web portal service for consumers in exactly this predicament. With BlackBerry Protect, if you lose or misplace your phone you can activate:

• loud ringing (so it will ring instead of vibrate from under the bed)
• a phone lock, so persons who find or stole the phone can't make calls or snoop around it without a password
• a "lost and found" screen on it - call me at this # if you've found the phone
• the GPS chip to present the current location of the phone on a map (the demo screen shot shows the BlackBerry is in Kanata Canada

Taking a cue from the Mission Impossible movies and TV show, the next step would have to involve the ability to self-destruct the device, maybe releasing some chemical agent that dissolves the devices circuit board..."This device will self-destruct in five... four.... three... "