UPDATED 06:06 EDT / FEBRUARY 27 2015

Silent Circle targets the enterprise with super-secure Blackphone

BlackphoneRemember the Blackphone? Developed in response to concerns over the US government’s surveillance programs and concerns over web security, the $600+ handset is designed to keep your communications private and your essential data absolutely secure. It was built in cooperation between encrypted communications provider Silent Circle and its hardware partner Geeksphone, but today the former company has announced it’s buying out the latter in order to take the project in a new direction.

In addition to the buyout, Silent Circle says its raised a handy $50 million in fresh funds in order to further its ambitions in the enterprise market.

According to Silent Circle, its witnessed “strong demand” from a number of enterprise customers that want the ability to keep their communications private. That demand prompted the company to launch the latest common equity round.

Silent Circle says it’s planning to unveil the “world’s first privacy ecosystem” at the upcoming Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelon, Spain, which will be made up of new software and services. The ecosystem is described as a “unique” platform that’s built on a fundamentally different mobile architecture, the cryptographic key-agreement protocol ZRTP. Besides this, there’ll also be a number of new devices on show.

“After a series of high profile cyber attacks over the last 12 months, global business is slowly waking up to the fact privacy and security is a business critical issue,” said a Silent Circle rep in an interview with VentureBeat.

The current Blackphone uses a heavily-customized version of the Android operating system it calls PrivatOS, which relies on a combination of encryption services and privacy-focused applications to form the most secure mobile platform around. The downside is that these features take away from the functionality of the phone, which means only the most paranoid of consumers have actually bought one. As a result, Silent Circle now wants to focus directly on security-driven enterprises with its new devices and ecosystem.


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