BlackBerry Considers Closing Sweden Operations

BlackBerry is considering closing its offices in Sweden, a move that would result in the loss of up to 100 jobs, a company spokesperson told Reuters.

“At this time, we are considering the closure of our offices in Sweden. Since this may impact approximately 100 employees, we are now initiating consultations with the employees’ trade unions,” the spokesperson said in an email.

BlackBerry had about 7,000 people as of Sept. 2014, according to the its website.

Separately, BlackBerry said on Tuesday it is launching a new certificate service that will help bring the security level it offers on smartphones to a slew of devices from cars to smart meters.

Certicom, a subsidiary of BlackBerry and an industry pioneer in elliptic curve cryptography, announced a new offering that it contends will secure millions of devices, expected to be part of the growingInternet of Things (IoT) sphere.

The company said it has already won a contract in Britain to issue certificates for the smart meter initiative there with more than 104 million smart meters and home energy management devices.

The service will make it much easier for companies rolling out such devices to authenticate and secure them, the company said.

Separately, BlackBerry also outlined a plan to expand its research and development efforts on innovation and improvement in computer security.

The initiative is being dubbed BlackBerry Center for High Assurance Computing Excellence (CHACE).

Increased network and device security has become a huge focus for large North American corporations in the face of costly and damaging security breaches.

Edited by NDTV staff from original story by Reuters