The U.S Army is preparing to launch a new bring your own device (BYOD) pilot program that will allow enlisted service personnel to connect their own communications devices to Army networks.
Planning for the pilot program was unveiled by Lt. Gen. John Morrison Jr., the Army’s deputy chief of staff, G-6, at during an August 18 session at the AFCEA TechNet Augusta conference hosted by AFCEA International.
“You will see over the coming months that we are going to aggressively get after virtualized instances. In September, early October, we will begin a bring your own device pilot,” said Morrison.
“We call it a pilot, but it is significant in size, because we’ve already done a pilot of several hundred users,” the general said. “Now we’re going to ship that out to thousands of users.”
Morrison explained that the impetus for the latest pilot program follows from the push to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, but added that much of the groundwork had been laid out prior to the public health crisis.
“We’re able to do that because we laid the foundation in for this notion of a unified network. We focus on what we have to secure and defend and then we provide the right access controls to control it,” stated Morrison.
The program aims at not only improving communications capabilities, but in realizing cost savings as well, he said.
