BlackBerry

It’s not just during emergencies, as more and more agencies move to voice over IP (VOIP) and other technologies like instant messaging or texting that depend on the cloud and security making secure communications become even more important.

Paul Battaglia, the vice president of federal sales for Blackberry, said agencies need extra layers of security to protect mobile devices and the data that resides on them.

Paul Battaglia, the vice president of federal sales for Blackberry, said agencies want a single “pane of glass” to monitor the cyber posture of all of their mobile devices from laptops to smartphones to wearables.

The Defense Department is in the final stages of a test to show how derived credentials from the Common Access Card can secure smartphones and tablet computers. Richard Hale, the deputy CIO for cybersecurity, boldly predicts that by the end of the calendar year the military will be issuing derived credentials on mobile devices.

From law enforcement to population counting, the federal government is going mobile. Nearly every department has at least one mobile computing deployment going on. And that preference for BlackBerry is melting away fast. Tom Simmons, public sector vice president at Citrix, joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive to offer an overview of mobility trends in 2015.

The Defense Department, long beholden to BlackBerry as its main mobility solution, plans to increase its use of Apple and Android smartphones tenfold over the next year.

The White House is looking for new ways to stay ahead of the technology curve. One consideration is to upgrade its smart phones from blackberries to Androids or other smartphones. But making the switch is not that easy. There are things to consider such as security issues, effectiveness, and cost. For perspective, Tom and Emily spoke with Shawn McCarthy research director at IDC Government on the Federal Drive. He explains why the White House is not switching from using the blackberry in the near future.

New investors could restore BlackBerry’s place in the federal market, as the company weighs its options for the future.

Kim Hancher, the chief information officer at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, will hsare her ideas on mobile device management August 6, 2013

The Pentagon’s mobile plan includes device approvals that will involve some up-front costs. The expectation is those costs will be quickly offset by eliminating the inefficiency of the slow, stovepiped and outdated approaches that have characterized DoD mobility up until now.