BYOD for unclassified at DoD possible in 2014

Defense Department personnel may be able to conduct unclassified information on their personal mobile device in late 2013 or early 2014, said Bruce Bennett, program executive officer of communications systems within the Defense Information Systems Agency.

Bennett spoke July 20 at an AFCEA-DC conference on defense adoption of mobile technologies. Adoption of mobile devices is predicated on four interdependent areas, Bennett said: technology, policy, security and culture.

"If you're not moving all four parts together, you're not getting anywhere," he said, adding that's why the DoD will hold off on BYOD until later.

"The whole idea is to protect the data. Right now with a BYOD device, that's suspect," he said.

"The last thing you want to do is set back the speed and the progress we've made to date on mobility by throwing in that one extra variable [BYOD] that is not really providing anything," he said.

On the matter of bandwidth requirements for mobile devices, Bennett said the department's goal is to eventually field apps that are bandwidth-aware, communicating to the network what its current capacity is.

Virtualization on mobile devices, he acknowledged, does require more bandwidth and the department is in need of better data compression and quality of service algorithms.

For more:
- go to the conference webpage

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