Singapore Nonprofit PPIS Secures Centers with Help from BlackBerry and Partner ACE Pacific Group

SINGAPORE – September 22, 2020 – BlackBerry Limited has announced that the Singapore Muslim Women’s Association (PPIS) has deployed BlackBerry Protect to secure endpoints throughout its 16 centers in Singapore. Delivered by partner ACE Pacific Group, a leading value-added distributor for the Asia Pacific region, BlackBerry’s endpoint security solution was chosen by PPIS to safeguard the delivery of trusted community services during the global COVID-19 pandemic.

A nonprofit social welfare organization relied on by Muslim women of all ages in Singapore, PPIS has provided much needed support throughout the global health crisis. Restrictions enforced to curb the spread of COVID-19 have created additional challenges for many, including financial difficulty, job loss, and the pressures of living in close quarters. The 16 PPIS centers across the island have remained open during the pandemic, with social workers, counselors and teachers offering family and children services, including counselling on family violence and marital issues, infant care and playgroup, and before- and after-school programs for children aged 7 to 14. PPIS also launched temporary initiatives and a new Women in Need fund to provide financial support for basic needs and provide seed money for budding female entrepreneurs.

To ensure the ongoing provision of its services and the confidentiality of client data, PPIS recognized that it needed to improve its cybersecurity posture. In 2019, PPIS experienced a series of phishing attacks that demonstrated the organization’s existing antivirus software was no longer effective at protecting against today’s cyber threats. A breach of client information could have not only put clients at risk but also have major ramifications if the organization violated Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act.

“We needed to streamline endpoint management so we could focus on projects that help PPIS meet its strategic goals for digital transformation,” said Thariq Aziz Abdul Hamid, PPIS Information Technology Manager, “In every respect, I found BlackBerry Protect to be a perfect fit. BlackBerry Protect is performing exactly as we’d hoped, and we’re planning to add BlackBerry Optics for Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) to our security stack in the near future. Our endpoints are secure, our users are happy, and we have time to work on new projects.”

BlackBerry partner ACE Pacific Group was engaged to help PPIS choose a new antivirus solution that not only offered better malware protection but also eliminated the administrative burden of having to manage signature updates. BlackBerry Protect was chosen for its AI-powered ability to predict and prevent the execution of ransomware and zero-day threats without the need for time-consuming endpoint management processes. Furthermore, the BlackBerry Protect console allows extended visibility of the network to detect attacks and potential vulnerabilities across all endpoints, users and data from a centralized dashboard.

“We’re always surveying the market for security solutions that are operationally sound and technically sophisticated,” said Mark Ang, ACE Regional Managing Director. “After conducting extensive tests and confirming its capabilities for proactive prevention, we deployed BlackBerry Protect at every ACE location. The implementation was simple and straightforward, so we felt confident recommending BlackBerry Protect to PPIS. We’re looking forward to offering our customers a complete Unified Endpoint Security (UES) solution following the recent release of BlackBerry Spark Suites.”

BlackBerry Protect is an integrated threat prevention solution that combines the power of AI to block malware infections with additional security controls that safeguard against script-based, fileless, memory, and external device-based attacks. BlackBerry Protect has a pre-execution Predictive Advantage (PA) to prevent advanced threats, including zero-day attacks, on average 1,000 days before they are first detected in the wild. The power of prevention is part of BlackBerry Spark’s modern approach to Unified Endpoint Security (UES) Zero Trust for end-to-end protection.

“BlackBerry strongly believes in giving back to the communities in which we operate,” said Stephen Mak, Vice President, Asia Pacific at BlackBerry Spark. “Together with ACE, we are proud to have helped PPIS move successfully from a traditional AV model to an AI-driven, preventative approach to threat management– ensuring the organisation is able to control the chaos of today’s complex cybersecurity environment and focus on their important work.”

For more information please visit https://www.blackberry.com/content/dam/bbcomv4/blackberry-com/en/success-stories/ppis/cs-ppis-.pdf.