Track SMS And PIN Messages On Your Users BlackBerrys

We wrote a post a few years ago about how the Royal Bank of Canada disabled PIN messaging and SMS messaging on their employees BlackBerry devices because they couldn’t adequately audit the information being sent and received since the data didn’t flow through the companies BES server. Retain for BlackBerry Enterprise Server from GWAVA aims to make that problem a thing of the past.

Retain isn’t the first application for the BlackBerry that allows for the archiving of PIN and SMS messages. It is, however, the first solution to do so solely from the server side of things, i.e., there is no client for the BlackBerry handhelds.

Until Retain for BlackBerry Enterprise Server, only email messages that passed through your BlackBerry® SmartPhones and your BlackBerry Enterprise Server could be archived by an email archiving program. This occurs at your mail server (i.e. Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino or Novell GroupWise server). Retain for BlackBerry Enterprise Server empowers organizations to archive and audit all SMS messages, PIN messages and phone call logs for long-term electronic data retention.

If your company provides your BlackBerry to you for business use I see no problem with level of auditing. A lot of BlackBerry users, however, buy their own devices and ask for them to be hooked up to the corporate BES. I certainly hope that users in these cases are absolutely made aware that this type of auditing could be turned on.