Blackberry discontinued their legacy business of manufacturing phones two years ago in favor of developing cybersecurity solutions. This was part of an overall corporate focus to create a suite of cybersecurity products, most notably enterprise platform security software for IoT device protection. Their most recent acquisition, Cylance, could be the linchpin in Blackberry’s quest to become a full service cybersecurity provider for the IoT. Cylance is a highly regarded endpoint protection and antivirus company. They currently have close to 100 of the Fortune 500 as clients, and claim to have 3,500 or so other enterprise customers.
Blackberry’s $1.4 billion deal to acquire cybersecurity company Cylance cements the smartphone pioneer’s pivot to an exclusive focus on cybersecurity.
The Canadian company has made several other security acquisitions in recent years, but none as large as the Cylance deal announced on Friday. At over $1 billion, the move is a surprisingly large one, indicating the Blackberry will move further away from its devices, which still underpin a number of the company’s existing enterprise security deals.
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