The government-official SecuSmart-encrypted BlackBerry is available to everyone for $2770

Who knew that one day we'd be able tobuy the kind of secure phone that only spies from movies and highgovernment officials are privileged to? It's happening, folks -Germany's Secusmart GmbH is selling the most secure BlackBerry 10phones out there for the affordable sum of $2770 (2000 euro),contract-free. The company is looking to offer the same securityfeatures that German chancellor Angela Merkel relies on to bankers,lawyers, politicians, and inevitably, drug barons posing aswell-groomed businessmen.

The SecuSuite for BB10 features ahardware-based security solution that integrates elliptic curvecryptography, certificate-based authentication of call participants,and 128 bit end-to-end AES encryption. Basically, it's a chip builtinto a special microSD card that provides additional secure memory tostore confidential information in a protected environment.

Secusmart's CEO, Hans-Cristoph Quelle,explains that voice encryption and secure communication in general isa "niche that is widening now." Indeed, lately we have beenwitnessing how mass-concerns about governmental spying oncommunications are presenting an opportunity for security companiesto enter the huge smartphone market. Recently, different companiesannounced two security-oriented consumer Android smartphones thatimprove the OS's security from many angles.

If you don't want a BlackBerry phone,though, Secusmart plans to have Android and iOS devices up for saleas well. By making extended security features available on cheaperconsumer smartphones, the company hopes to increase demand for suchfunctionality.

source: Bloomberg