DOD implements secure program for mobile devices
WASHINGTON — The Defense Department is rolling out a program that will allow users of a range of mobile devices — working anywhere from remote battlefields to the Pentagon to rapidly share classified and protected data across all components.
More than 600,000 DOD employees, from soldiers on the front lines to Joint Staff planners, use government-issued mobile devices, mostly BlackBerry phones. Several thousand of the mobile devices in use in DOD are capable of handling classified data.
The goal of the implementation plan announced today is to ensure that mobile devices throughout the department — as well as their apps, email and other functions, and the wireless networks supporting them — can operate securely in often hostile and remote environments and can adapt to ever-changing technology, even as the number of users expands.
Teri Takai, DOD chief information officer, told American Forces Press Service and the Pentagon Channel that the challenge for the Defense Department has been to design a unified system capable of fully leveraging the potential of devices that often differ in capabilities and sophistication in a way that will allow users to communicate in a secure, wireless environment.
“We will be able to not only use multiple commercial devices, but we will have a better process for bringing new commercial devices onto the network,” she said.
Takai, along with the Defense Information Systems Agency, is leading the effort, which will use commercial carrier networks capable of handling classified data.
http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123337713
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