Blackberry wants to lock down security for the Internet of Things

BlackBerry Ltd 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 growing Internet 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.