RIM has announced that their BlackBerry® platform has now received Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) approval for operation on all wireless network standards supported by BlackBerry* including Mobitex, DataTAC, GSM/GPRS, Nextel and CDMA 1X. RIM’s cryptographic firmware embedded in the Java-based series of BlackBerry Wireless Handhelds™ has been awarded the FIPS 140-2 security validation by the U.S. Government’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). FIPS validation is an important and often mandatory purchasing criteria for many government organizations.

RIM is showcasing BlackBerry this week at the FOSE conference in Washington, DC. Mike Lazaridis, RIM’s President and Co-CEO, will provide the FOSE keynote address on Thursday morning.

“BlackBerry has already been deployed in hundreds of government organizations and we continue to work closely with leading agencies to address the evolving security requirements of our government customers,” said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at Research In Motion. “The FIPS 140-2 validation will help facilitate the continuing adoption of BlackBerry by a broader range of government customers that wish to realize the individual and organizational benefits of wireless connectivity.”