I don't mean safe for your health, we already know that devices cause 'Blackberry thumb'. I'm talking here about security concerns an administrator might have when attaching these devices to your network. So far Blackberries don't have AntiVirus installed, but there isn't any virus that can infect a BB device (yet), even so viruses should be scanned at gateway level before they reach the device anyway, to minimise the risk of a virus being forwarded on to a machine that can be infected.

Aside from viruses, up until recently it was assumed that Blackberry devices were the safest possible thing you could attach to your network and use to read e-mail, but now some clever hackers have developed "Blackjacking". Have a look at the link below which shows how to compromise a company network using a Blackberry.

http://www.praetoriang.net/presentations/blackjack.html

Of course to do this, you need to covertly acquire a Blackberry device, and this method will only work until the Blackberry administrator kills the handheld from the server ... which I would hope would be fairly instant if they are on the ball.

It's an interesting read, and the moral of the story is clear - be alert and wipe your devices as soon as they are lost. If you are a Blackberry user, you should notify your admins immediately if you notice your device is missing. If it's wiped and then found by you again, it's a simple 5 minute task to restore it back to the same condition again.

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