DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - Blackberry newbie

**nd90t3sf** · 02-20-2007, 02:08 AM

Slow? compared to what? The WM 5.0 devices I have used kick the crap out of any palm device I have used. I mean, the old 2003 devices were a bit on the slow side, but that OS was crap.

Yeah, blackberry is pretty good from the user's prospective, but for sysadmin's it's a NIGHTMARE. Lock down your network, but some dick in a higher level wants you to set up a blackberry server, oops big hole in your security, because of how easy it is for your blackberry to get a virus.

And what does RIM say about it? "If you set it up right it isn't a problem", yeah, if you set it up "right" it's totally useless. If the blackberry market wasn't so big, Cingular would have dropped support for them, and as is, at the corporate level there is a big push to get people to switch to WM for security reasons.

Sorry - but I'm afraid you have been misinformed with regards Blackberry.
I am an IT Manager here in the UK for a quite large firm.
I run a WIndows AD network, one that I built myself from the ground up some 6+ years ago.
We have a Blackberry Enterprise Server that connects to our current Exchange 2003 Servers to distribute mail to our sales, marketting and managers who carry Blackberry devices.
I can tell you categorically that there are no security risks in the system we have set up.
As for being a Sys Admin's nightmare - the Blackberry server is far from it.
In fact of all the various systems we run the Blackberry system is the one that requires the least amount of work.
We watch for patches for the Windows server it sits on of course and as RIM release fixes and patches we apply them.
However the server is reliable and the system never goes wrong - we never need to do any work on it.

The Blackberry system is a complete push system, there is no need for the devices to log into anything and pull e-mail.
This in itself makes things a lot more secure as the mail messages arrive "in house" and are then pushed out to the device.
When you have a device, something running WM5 for example, the device needs to come in to collect it's mail and this is a major security risk in itself.

Most of my systems are Windows based, however the Blackberry system was the one we decided upon because of it's ease of use, reliability and security and if we were rolling it all out again today we'd make the same choice again.
Any system is only as secure as you make it - it's well known that Windows & Linux are both as secure as one another for example, but only when configured correctly.
However with Blackberry because of the push system it is more secure than any system that requires remote access to your network/systems to collect e-mail.

02-20-2007, 02:08 AM	#9
nd90t3sf Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 451 Senior Member	Slow? compared to what? The WM 5.0 devices I have used kick the crap out of any palm device I have used. I mean, the old 2003 devices were a bit on the slow side, but that OS was crap. Yeah, blackberry is pretty good from the user's prospective, but for sysadmin's it's a NIGHTMARE. Lock down your network, but some dick in a higher level wants you to set up a blackberry server, oops big hole in your security, because of how easy it is for your blackberry to get a virus. And what does RIM say about it? "If you set it up right it isn't a problem", yeah, if you set it up "right" it's totally useless. If the blackberry market wasn't so big, Cingular would have dropped support for them, and as is, at the corporate level there is a big push to get people to switch to WM for security reasons. Sorry - but I'm afraid you have been misinformed with regards Blackberry. I am an IT Manager here in the UK for a quite large firm. I run a WIndows AD network, one that I built myself from the ground up some 6+ years ago. We have a Blackberry Enterprise Server that connects to our current Exchange 2003 Servers to distribute mail to our sales, marketting and managers who carry Blackberry devices. I can tell you categorically that there are no security risks in the system we have set up. As for being a Sys Admin's nightmare - the Blackberry server is far from it. In fact of all the various systems we run the Blackberry system is the one that requires the least amount of work. We watch for patches for the Windows server it sits on of course and as RIM release fixes and patches we apply them. However the server is reliable and the system never goes wrong - we never need to do any work on it. The Blackberry system is a complete push system, there is no need for the devices to log into anything and pull e-mail. This in itself makes things a lot more secure as the mail messages arrive "in house" and are then pushed out to the device. When you have a device, something running WM5 for example, the device needs to come in to collect it's mail and this is a major security risk in itself. Most of my systems are Windows based, however the Blackberry system was the one we decided upon because of it's ease of use, reliability and security and if we were rolling it all out again today we'd make the same choice again. Any system is only as secure as you make it - it's well known that Windows & Linux are both as secure as one another for example, but only when configured correctly. However with Blackberry because of the push system it is more secure than any system that requires remote access to your network/systems to collect e-mail.
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