Analysts praise RIM's tactics in Indian dispute

RIM's attempt to diffuse the row over its secure email server connections in India by offering to run an industry forum for authorities on how encrypted data should be monitored and accessed has been welcomed by analysts.

The firm hopes the move will be sufficient to dissuade the Indian government from making good its threat to suspend RIM's services by a 31 August deadline.

Lief-Olof Wallin, research vice president at Gartner, said RIM's move was " very smart" as it highlighted the importance of data security to both the business world in general and, more pertinently, the Indian economy.

"Enterprises need their data to be encrypted. There are plenty of other services firms could use if RIM was banned that would just create the same issue but with a different company," he said.

"Furthermore, so much of Indian business in health, finance and insurance relies on corporations being assured data is encrypted on services like BlackBerry that it would be damaging to a host of enterprises if a general ban [on encrypted communications] was to be implemented too."

Wallin said there was a strong case to be made for a forum such the one being proposed by RIM.

"Creating a series of industry policies and lawful intercept procedures for dealing with encrypted data is a much better way of addressing the issue governments are facing," he added.

He added that countries that opted to block such services would only end up harming their economies by causing firms to relocate to neighbouring states where laws on encrypted data were more relaxed.