Security Technical Overview

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How the BlackBerry Attachment Service protects data on a device

A BlackBerry® device uses the BlackBerry Attachment Service to process an attachment in an email message or calendar entry so that the user can view the attachment on the device. The BlackBerry Attachment Service is designed to prevent a potentially malicious application from accessing data on the device by using binary format parsing to open the attachment and process it.

After the BlackBerry Attachment Service processes the attachment, the BlackBerry Router sends the attachment to the device for rendering. If the attachment in the email message or calendar entry is an application, the device does not run the application.

For more information about the attachment file formats that the BlackBerry® Enterprise Server supports, see the BlackBerry Enterprise Server Feature and Technical Overview.

Best practice: Protecting the BlackBerry Attachment Service

To help prevent the spread of potential attacks from the computer that hosts the BlackBerry® Attachment Service to other computers in your organization’s network, consider the following guidelines:
  • Install the BlackBerry Attachment Service on a computer that is separate from the computer that hosts the BlackBerry® Enterprise Server.
  • Place the computer that hosts the BlackBerry Attachment Service in its own network segment.
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