Fresh off the starting gates to a hopefully more successful future, BlackBerry (formally Research in Motion) - in anticipation of many new users taking advantage of numerous third-party apps for its new Blackberry devices, is now working directly with Trend Micro - a long-time mobile vendor focused on cloud security, to expand the protection it already provides to BlackBerry customers against malware and privacy issues related to third-party applications.

It's an interesting partnership, though we must say we hadn’t thought Blackberry would need such services layered on top of its own.

BlackBerry will incorporate Trend Micro's Mobile Application Reputation Service into its own existing internal, proprietary system for analyzing applications. With the cloud-based Trend Micro Mobile Application Reputation Service, both current and new applications submitted to the BlackBerry World storefront will be scanned for potential malicious behavior.

This will certainly provide a more robust and comprehensive approach for addressing privacy and security concerns in third-party programs.

Kaspersky Lab, another significant security vendor, recently provided a detailed set of security issues we will likely face in 2013. So there’s very little doubt that the volume of malicious and high-risk mobile apps is rising dramatically across the industry. This has been more prevalent as an issue on the Android side of the fence, given its more open ecosystem.

It is also certainly true that it's not only volume, but the speed with which cybercriminals are targeting new platforms and applications.

Trend Micro and BlackBerry’s collaboration will better ensure that the apps users download are indeed safe. All in all, that is a good thing, and it’s smart for BlackBerry to take the extra precautions as its new BlackBerry 10 devices and operating begin to take off. BlackBerry is well aware that it would only take one nasty security hit to derail everything the company has worked towards over the last 18 months.

Especially given its deserved reputation for being the most secure mobile platform bar none, having any BlackBerry World app sneak through with malware lurking in it would be unacceptable.

For its part, Trend Micro has scanned and evaluated over two million mobile applications. Mobile Application Reputation Service is the company's next-generation cloud-based technology for mobile operating systems, which analyzes application code and behavior to identify risks from malware and data leaks.

It also detects the abuse of battery, memory and data resources.

This service leverages the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network infrastructure to provide meaningful mobile app reputation ratings. The Smart Protection Network is built on in-the-cloud technologies that fit with cloud-based security services like the Mobile Application Reputation Service. By checking URLs, e-mails, files and applications against continuously updated and correlated threat databases, customers always have immediate access to the latest protection.

Better safe than sorry. Clearly BlackBerry understands this.