Tag: us government mobile security

This announcement was made in line with the one year anniversary of the Digital Government Strategy.

Officials from the White House have just announced a number of new initiatives and resources that it is making available, including guidelines for mobile security, which are meant to help to boost the vision of the administration to allow access to government information, in a secure manner, on any device and at any time.

Digital Government Strategy U.S. CIO Steven VanRoekel made the announcement regarding these brand new initiatives.

He said that they are meant to help to maintain the building that is occurring on the foundation of accomplishments that have already been achieved over the last year by the Digital Government Strategy. Within a joint statement, federal CTO Todd Park, and VanRoekel announced that a government wide set of mobile security guidelines have been published by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

The guidelines also offer a baseline of standard mobile security requirements for federal agencies.

Furthermore, beyond those requirements for computing, it also includes a federal agency mobile computing decision framework, and a reference architecture for mobile security. These new documents are meaningful not only because they provide a standard for government agencies and industry for the development of products that can be used more safely on government networks, but also because of the active roles in development that were played by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security.

VanRoekel explained that “This work … really sets the foundation in place for the next phase of federal computing.” He also went on to add that “The future for us is one where mobile is the default computing platform.”

This announcement was made closely on the heels of an approval that the government gave to iPhones and other iOS based devices based on their ability to pass the mobile security requirements throughout a lengthy and exhaustive testing process. The federal government has also released a new catalog for developers that is made up of more than four hundred machine readable government data sets.

Mobile security continues to be high priority in government

As the world becomes more mobile, the adoption of mobile technology on the government level is becoming more prolific. In the U.S., the federal government has been reviewing the quality of mobile devices based on the Android operating system. For several years, Blackberry mobile devices have been the standard for government workers, largely due to their mobile security features and the fact that these devices can be locked down relatively easily in the event of a serious threat. While Blackberry has long been a favorite for the federal government, that is likely to change due to the favor of the Department of Defense.

Samsung Knox wins approval from DoD

Late last week, Samsung announced that its mobile security suite known as Knox has received the approval of the Department of Defense. This approval had initially been restricted to the Blackberry operating system, which the Department of Defense had considered the most secure mobile operating system available. According to the federal agency, Samsung’s Knox mobile security software is on par with the security that can be found on the Blackberry operating system. As such, Android devices may soon become readily available to government workers.

Blackberry may soon see strong competition

Mobile security has become a major concerning for the federal government. Mobile devices traffic a significant amount of sensitive information, all of which is highly valuable to hackers and malicious groups that would be interested in exploiting this information. With mobile security having a high priority in the federal government, diversity in mobile devices has been somewhat sparse on the government level.

Approval from agency may boost enterprise performance of Samsung Galaxy S 4

Samsung is making a major push into the enterprise market with its Galaxy S 4, which will equipped with the company’s formidable Knox mobile security system. The enterprise market has, for several years, been dominated by the Blackberry. Whether Android devices can succeed in this realm is unknown, but their performance in the market is likely to see a significant boost from the approval of the Department of Defense.