By Steve White, Cybersecurity Architect, Microsoft Enterprise Services’ Cybersecurity Team
The General Services Administration (GSA) announced last week that it is closing around a dozen telework sites across the D.C. area. Thanks to the ubiquity of powerful mobile computing devices (laptops, smartphones and now tablets) and broadband Internet access, GSA rightly argues that "telework has become less about where work gets done and more about how work gets done." The Obama Administration is encouraging GSA and other federal agencies to facilitate employee telework whenever feasible.
On a related note, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra told an AFCEA gathering last week that the current federal model of owning, managing and maintaining legions of desktops running a core configuration is incredibly inefficient and “mind-bogglingly” expensive. How expensive? The GSA telework sites currently serve about 300 federal employees at a cost of about $3 million a year – averaging $10,000 per user.
His solution? Give every federal employee $2,000 to buy their own equipment. The thinking is that employees’ personal devices are often faster and more powerful than the devices agencies provide.
The big question is, of course, how do you secure all those devices?
To help further this discussion, Microsoft and GovLoop are hosting a two-part interactive training series on cybersecurity and the mobile federal workforce. We’ll examine recommendations for agencies trying to successfully balance security, privacy and productivity and talk about the experiences some government agencies have had deploying these solutions.
The first session, Common Mobile Challenges and How to Overcome Them, kicks off this Thursday, March 10 at 2 p.m. ET. If you’re interested, register here – we’d love to hear your stories and learn your insights!