Blackberry on Wednesday announced it has purchased United Kingdom-based cybersecurity consulting company Encription Limited as part of a bid to expand its cybersecurity services offerings.
The announcement of the deal – the terms of which were not disclosed – came alongside the launch of Blackberry’s new Professional Cybersecurity Services practice.
The company said its new service will offer organizations consulting services, tools and best practices to assess and combat rapidly-changing cybersecurity risks.
“We recognize that security vulnerabilities are a top risk concern for public and private sector organizations alike,” Blackberry CEO John Chen said in a statement. “The creation of our Professional Cybersecurity Services practice and acquisition of Encription reinforces our commitment to providing customers the industry’s most secure mobility solutions and helping them to assess and mitigate risks.”
Blackberry said it will offer clients strategic security to determine the best practices in IT operation across enterprise mobility management and cloud services; technical security to provide assistance for infrastructure and product development; automotive and Internet of Things (IoT) security to address the rapid commercialization of IoT solutions; and threat detection, vulnerability assessment and incident response analysis.
The move is just Blackberry’s latest foray into the software services space. The company also purchased Mobile Device Management (MDM) company Good Technology in November, and announced plans to integrate Good’s software solutions and services with its own software suites.
Both buys have the potential to create new revenue streams for the company in the wake of flagging device sales.
After purchasing Good Technology, Blackberry said it expects to realize approximately $160 million in GAAP revenue from Good in the first year following the transaction.
Blackberry’s strategic entrance into the cybersecurity space could also prove lucrative. Gartner has forecast the information security market is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 7.9 percent to $23 billion by 2019.
