Business Update: BlackBerry Builds Out Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Capabilities with New Cybersecurity Innovations

BlackBerry Limited (NYSE: BB; TSX: BB) today announced BlackBerry® Optics 3.0, its next-generation cloud-based endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution and BlackBerry® Gateway, the company’s first AI-empowered Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) product. Rooted in a prevention-first and AI-driven approach, BlackBerry’s new endpoint and network security capabilities will help differentiate BlackBerry’s extended detection and response (XDR) strategy.

According to Forrester¹, “XDR unifies EDR with other security and business tooling. EDR gives granular visibility and provides precise response actions for endpoints. However, it lacks visibility and response actions for other parts of the business, like non-endpoint related network telemetry, email behaviors, and cloud environments, leaving security analytics to pick up the slack. XDR provides needed visibility and control to other parts of the business through integrations that combine EDR data with other types of telemetry.”

The new cloud-native architecture and Advanced Query capability that underpins Optics 3.0 is integral to BlackBerry’s XDR strategy. With Optics 3.0, Edge AI threat detection and automated response capabilities execute directly on the endpoint device so an incident can be mitigated in near real-time. The resulting telemetry, alert, and forensic data gets stored in the cloud data lake along with non-endpoint related telemetry data. Security professionals can then query and analyze the multiple source of telemetry data to gain greater visibility and context into an organization’s security environment.

BlackBerry Gateway marks the company’s entry into ZTNA for both SaaS and on-premises applications. Built with a “Prevent First and Protect First” approach, Gateway’s Zero Trust architecture helps organizations reduce network access risk by assuming every user, endpoint, and network is potentially hostile until identity is authenticated. As the company builds out its XDR architecture, Gateway would provide ZTNA telemetry data that would be added to the cloud data lake.

“We are delighted to see our vision for an extended detection and response architecture take shape,” said Billy Ho, EVP of Product Engineering, BlackBerry. “Traditional endpoint security alone is not enough to tackle the sophisticated threat landscape. Our end-to-end approach to cybersecurity is deeply rooted in Cylance AI and ML to provide enhanced visibility and protection against current and future cyberthreats. As part of our XDR roadmap, we will continue to add new products and additional sources of security telemetry, such as user behavior, identity, network, data, application, and cloud to the Optics 3.0 cloud data lake. This will enable data correlation, automated workflows, automated threat hunting, to enable more efficient and effective detection and response.”

BlackBerry Gateway, when integrated with the BlackBerry® Protect advanced AI-powered endpoint security product, provides a comprehensive defense against threats targeting devices, networks, and user identity. BlackBerry Protect leverages AI to prevent known, unknown, and zero-day threats, while BlackBerry Gateway ensures business networks are only accessed by trusted and healthy devices.

1 Forrester Research, “Adapt or Die: XDR is on a Collision Course With SIEM and SOAR,” April 28, 2021

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