RIM: "no special deals" for countries seeking BlackBerry access

India has not yet officially jumped on the BlackBerry-blocking bandwagon, but the country has been putting the pressure on RIM to allow government access to user data in the name of security. RIM has now issued a public response to India: the company says it tries to be cooperative with various governments, but that it has firm principles for allowing access to data.

RIM's principles boil down to allowing access only within the confines of local law and national security requirements, and the guidelines are vendor-neutral—governments can get "no greater access to BlackBerry consumer services than the carriers and regulators already impose on RIM's competitors and other similar communications technology companies," wrote the company.

The BlackBerry maker also said that it won't be making any changes to the security architecture for BlackBerry Enterprise Server. "[C]ontrary to any rumors, the security architecture is the same around the world and RIM truly has no ability to provide its customers' encryption keys," said RIM.

Finally, the company said that it plans to maintain a consistent standard for government access—no special deals for certain countries. Still, RIM reassured the Indian government Friday that it would cooperate and find some sort of technical solution for its security concerns.

The statement comes after the United Arab Emerites and Saudi Arabia decided that they needed government access to RIM's services, or no more BlackBerrys. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirmed that the US was getting involved last week, describing the situation as a "complex set of issues." Saudi Arabia has since backed off on its decision to ban BlackBerrys, but the UAE is still holding steady to its plan.


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PCI Security Standards Council to Help Clear Cloudiness

The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) is expected to release a new version of the PCI Data Security Standard (DSS) in October of this year.

In this new version, the PCI DSS will address virtualization and cloud computing. This new guidance will be a huge win for virtualization adoption, as well as the organizations that are subject to PCI and under pressure to better manage costs. The Council, founded by American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB International, MasterCard Worldwide, and Visa, developed the PCI DSS to specify how to best protect payment card information. In other words, it specifies how to best protect you and me from anyone who attempts to break into systems to steal our valuable financial information.

Both Beyond Security's WSSA, AVDS and Meraki's Wireless Cloud Platform fully support the current PCI DSS standard and will be closely following this new directive.

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