Last June, the Department of Defense released its first mobile defense strategy with its plan to improve and incorporate three areas: wireless infrastructure, mobile devices and mobile apps. The government has been developing an IT infrastructure for a year that would withstand the security measures that the department upholds as part of its operations in order to properly align with the mobile device market.

On Tuesday, the Pentagon revealed that it is planning to enable the Department of Defense’s 600,000 smartphone, tablet and other mobile device users to share classified information and protect data using the latest security technologies on the market. With 470,000 Blackberry users, 8,700 Android users and 41,000 people using Apple’s operating system, this new plan hopes to create an even wider variety of mobile devices being used by the military.

Right now, few commercial devices are used for matters involving classified communications because of obvious security reasons. In order to implement the new mobile plan, the new system devised by the department aims to create higher security mechanism for these commercial devices so they can be used, which will increase the variety pool that the military force can choose from.

With a world so heavily dependent on mobile devices and new developments that have led the world to such levels of technological advancements, it is natural that the U.S. military force has begun to use such innovations to its advantage. 

Image via Wired

The mobile strategy plans to "align the various mobile devices, pilots and initiatives across the department under common objectives to ensure the war fighter benefits from these activities," Teri Takai, the Pentagon's chief information officer, said in a statement.

The document outlining the plan lists a number of security features that this mobile platform would need, including malware detection and the ability for officials to delete highly sensitive data from the device permanently.

With issues of mobile security at such heightened levels, the government is going to have to take every precautionary method it can in order to protect such imperative information. Before the department can begin its transformation to a mobile platform, a level of security is going to have to be produced that can withstand the threats of the latest technologies.


Edited by Rachel Ramsey