According to an announcement from the Pentagon Tuesday, the United States Department of Defense is introducing a new program that will allow today's leading mobile devices to rapidly share classified and other secure information 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," says Nick Simeone of the American Forces Press Service. "Several thousand of the mobile devices in use in DOD are capable of handling classified data."
Per the DoD's plan, the Pentagon will migrate from a BlackBerry standard toward iOS and Android. By October 2013, the DoD wants to have in place dramatically expanded secure wireless voice, video, and data capabilities.
"The commercial mobile device market is moving so quickly, we can't wait," Teri Takai, DOD's chief information officer, said. "If we don't get something in place, we will have multiple solutions, just because the demand out there to be able to use these devices is so strong."
Officials are planning for a phased implementation involving vendor competition for development of a system that Takai suggests, given DOD's 3 million plus employees, could prove to be a model for large companies that also need to protect the transmission of both open and confidential data.
Source: American Forces Press Service
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