Hi, I'm Tom Field, senior vice president of editorial with information security media group. My topic today is enabling a high security mobile workforce in the federal government. My privilege to be speaking with Michael Campbell, his general manager of Provora government solutions. Michael, thanks so much for joining me today.
Yeah, thank you. It's a pleasure. Michael, what do you find to be the unique risks and threats to the federal government mobile workforce? The easy way to answer that question is to step back and think about the risks that commercial mobile devices place upon the users.
So today, the commercial mobile devices that are in use are truly wonderful devices. They have hundreds of billions of dollars of developmental work that has gone into the development and creation of this amazing platform. They are capable of doing a lot of things. So because of that, the phone manufacturers themselves, the app developers, so your Instagrams and your Facebooks and your Twitter's and et cetera, they have access to a lot of information that these wonderful devices give them.
The devices have cameras that can record from the front and back and they have microphones. Most people don't even realize that people that work in the mobile device industry don't even realize how many microphones are on a commercial mobile device, the typical device. They range from anywhere from two to as many as five on a given platform. And in some of those cases, those microphones are the exclusive access to the actual phone manufacturer themselves.
So if you think federal government, anyone working in government is at risk of disclosing sensitive information, everyone is dealing with something that could be sensitive. If they, in the course of their work, have a device, a commercial mobile device that they never know if it's on or off, then that device could disclose or be leaking information, either to these overreaching app developers or to someone that has gained access to your device for other reasons, the various reasons. And in the aggregate, that data becomes quite powerful. They're able to take the data, for example, if it was reporting conversations, it can translate or capture a recording of someone, translate that to text, and then do keyword searches and then aggregate the data.
And in the bulk, the question of all that gives away quite a bit of sensitive information. So that's everyone, kind of the everyone use case. Now, clearly anyone that has a very sensitive role, someone who knows that they have to work around what is either called secret or sensitive or confidential type of information, is even at greater risk. And because of that today, the restrictions have begun to be put in place.
I was going to give an example to most people say, ah, there's just really not that many people that work around sensitive information. And as an example, what I was telling you just when we were talking earlier was I was around 96 separate agencies that have special agents or law enforcement arms where they're all doing active investigations or they are around and doing confidential type work, basically the entire federal government. They all have these arms. And that's extremely sensitive work.
So really where you say, ah, this is a DoD problem or this is an intelligence community problem or the reality is it's a problem with the cross entire federal government. So Michael, it's clear you're in a unique space. How would you say that the government sector is leveraging or not mobile technologies differently than what you see in the private sector? Let's break that one down as well.
So in government, what normally happens is that they will actually issue you. So they will issue a device. So they're embracing mobility and the need for mobility in some way, shape or form. But instead of letting you use a device that possible, you have acquired for yourself a personal device, I'm sorry.
Like now that's too risky. I must have some control. So they'll issue a device that's unique and in the commercial space, it's almost always bringing your body or your own device that you sign some agreement that gives you access to your company, your commercial assets and services. But in government, no, no.
Got it. Got to have an issue device that way. I have a much greater eye to organizational owner, the government leader. I have greater control over that device.
Depending on who you are, again, you'll get issued a device, you'll have a service plan that supports that device. And this gives you the ability to be reachable while on the move. Now it's interesting. Everyone doesn't think that, ah, there's not that many.
There are easily hundreds of thousands of devices issued to government employees and the federal government. Like I said, a government service agency has provided over 100,000 devices to every agency. The last time they did an actual audit, they could account for over three million different service plans that have been provided out inside the federal government. With this, however, becomes an awareness that there is a problem, that people are using the mobile devices that are issued to them and people are also, if they're not issued one, they're actually just using a personal device outside sort of the work boundaries, but it allows their life to be, for their, to do their job easier.
So Michael, I know that some government agencies actually restrict the use of mobile devices. What are the immediate consequences when that's the policy? So actually, I'm kind of expanding on your earlier question to give context to what you just asked was, look, so there are a lot of devices that are issued and people are beginning to use them in just every aspect of the government job. There is an awareness that this is a risk.
So in the first, the first question you said, what's the risk? Well, that, that awareness of these devices being able to listen or take pictures and track other things that you do, capture data is recognized and because of that, there is an ever-increasing lockdown on those devices. If you go to work in an organization that acknowledges a sensitive mission, you're going to see a lockbox sitting outside of the office and that lockbox is where you'll stick your mobile device and you'll then go to a desk. You won't have access to that lockbox.
Okay. So that comes with an impact. What are the consequences of that restriction? I almost laughed.
So let me tell a story, like a really brief story. We had a gentleman who is in his like early 20s developer. He is used to working on multiple different automated type systems to do his job. He's coding.
He's checking. He's collaborating. He's doing multiple things to enable an outcome. We brought him in and took him into a government environment where we were doing some stuff and he had to give up everything.
He had to give up his mobile phone. He had to give up his tablet. He walked into an environment where no one had any kind of activity except for a desk phone on the desktop computer and he looked super frustrating and he was not really sure how he was going to do the job that we had asked him to do. And another older government employee consents that he was frustrated and brought over to him a tablet, a piece of paper, a tablet, a paper and a pen and dropped it on the desk in front of him and the young gentleman looked at him like he was crazy.
Like how is this supposed to help him? And the reason I say that story is because it is like coming back in time to the consequence of cutting back or restricting the use of modern mobile technologies is that you really go back to operating like a 1980s organization where in the 80s you might have left the building to go to smoke extensively. Today you run out of building to use your phone because you have to play catch up. And whether that's for personal reasons or some people might say it is but it's usually not actually.
It's because you're doing some work that is easier on the mobile device than it is on the tool that is sitting at your desk. If you're even at a desk because sometimes you're not going to go to your desk. And so that's really the impact. I'm restricted while I'm at the office.
And then the other aspect of it is hey these things are so risky I have to put them in a lock box. But then if I'm not at work, then I jokingly say open prayer, it's training that you won't discuss something that is sensitive or disclose something that should not be disclosed. But the reality is that everyone self selects that level of risk and whether or not they're going to share or do something. People go to lunch, people go to remote conferences, people go to work in a remote site, people take phone calls from their cars and declare them sensitive secure environments.
These kind of things are happening every day. So the impact on it is that there is no risk risk mitigation, real risk mitigation while you're on the move. And then inside the work environment you're definitely operating in a constrained and effective way compared to what you could be. Michael, just following up on the story you told, what impact do you see potentially a long term in regarding the mission, recruitment, retaining the future workforce?
So that actually is a concern that is growing everywhere. The government workforce has been called older many times. But the reality is whether it's older or younger is you want to recruit young bright people into your environment. Today's young bright people have had a mobile device attached to their hand since they were very little.
Like my children for today, one day they'll go into the workforce. If there isn't a video screen up when they make a phone call they think the phone is broken. But that's the way they grow up. And so today if you're trying to recruit a person straight out of college, someone that's been out of college for a few years, they definitely would prefer to be in an environment where they can remain connected and leverage the tools that are available to them to be very fast and collaborative and other things and things like that.
And if you tell me you're going to take that away from me and I have other options, I'm most likely going to go work somewhere else. And that's happening. I've been told that recruiting and retention are seriously down across the entire government. And they're really impacting the contractual workforce as well.
Because if you whether your government or your contractor supporting government, you're being impacted by these same restrictions. That's kind of the recruiting and retention aspect. I don't know if you touched on mission, but mission also is impacted. Whether it's an opinion or a fact, a joke is that government takes forever to do anything.
And in a lot of ways that is true for many reasons, but one of them today would be that people are just slow to make decisions. They're slow to get it back to you. They're slow to collaborate with you. I have seen and experienced sometimes days and weeks between communication because I can't get a hold of someone.
They have disappeared during the workday. Their phone is in a lock box. They're not at their desk. So how do I get a hold of them to make a decision to move forward on something, to agree to something?
And it becomes quite challenging. And that's a simple mission impact. There are bigger mission impacts as well, but those are ones that I don't want to share. So Michael, what strategies can government agencies take to mitigate the risk of commercial mobile devices while still allowing their use?
That is a good news story. I appreciate the opportunity to share it. So one, I've never seen a collection of interested parties across the government come together on an issue like I have seen them come together around mobility. We have been in and around, I don't know, 15, 16 different government agencies and working sessions to discuss options to move forward to solve the problem.
So one, everyone sees that there's a problem and everyone is anxious and looking for what can we do. So that's part of the good news story. The other part of the good news story is some agencies, some DOD organizations, some federal agencies are taking steps. The steps are around reducing or mitigating risk.
The first big thing is you've got to control camera and microphones on this commercial device. This commercial device that was designed to do everything that has a very large service staff area, has lots of cameras, lots of microphones. I've got to somehow disable those things, so they're taking actions with available technologies to do that. The other part is they're gating access to different services so that maybe I have multiple work environments or multiple environments on my commercial device.
I have a personal environment and I have a work environment. They're figuring out and leveraging technologies to separate those. And then the other is they're actually investing in the wireless solutions that allow them to govern the data as a person is working, a person is using their tool to multiply technologies. Kind of in a way that you would have done this with fixed infrastructure over the last decades.
Today, it's starting to put those same investments into the wireless solutions. And you're bringing this entire portfolio together and it becomes a comprehensive solution to say that commercial mobile devices, the risks have been mitigated, go ahead and carry that device. Use that device in the work environment. Use that device while you're out doing your job on the move.
So Michael, given the strategy you've described, what cost benefit do you think agencies could achieve? So there's two ways to answer that question. One is, hey, how do I pay for this? What is the strategy to fund my investment that I was speaking to this portfolio play?
And then what is the implied damage of the expected savings? So the strategy is, look, there's an existing spend on technology, information technologies. Information technology today primarily is on fixed endpoints, desktop phones, desktop computers, conference rooms, things like that, things that don't move. Massive investment.
There's a big life cycle budget that goes without those technologies. What we're seeing is an analysis of that spend, which is enormous. Some people cost their organization as much as $15,000 in a year to sustain their fixed endpoints technologies that they use, but they can only use at their desk. Almost everyone costs about $5,000 a year to maintain that fixed endpoints technologies.
So as there's a recognition that, look, nobody really sits at their desk all day anymore. Very few people do. Everyone's collaborating in their job. Everybody's moving.
So how do we just take and shift that investment? So let's not life cycle the fixed endpoints solutions. Instead of life cycling, we'll let that run the end of life. End of life on most of the technologies is 5 to 10 years, definitely 5 years.
So let those things run the end of life, and we'll shift that investment into a mobile phone, a tablet, the wireless infrastructure, all of the other systems that allow you to put a mobile secure mobile solution in place. So that's one. That gets you the funding you need. The second is, how do I articulate the savings?
And there's actually been numerous different independent studies that kind of all concluded on the same thing. If I can give back to a typical government employee, and again, this is an enterprise type aspect of it, not even talking to a mission, but enterprise, office working type employees, if I can give back 30 minutes a day, 30 minutes a day, where they make a decision, where they review a document, where they agree or disagree on something, whether they or increase their knowledge about something that's coming up, the amount of value on that is in millions, even for a small organization per year. And again, just 30 minutes, 30 minutes, it's definitely going to be more than 30 minutes, but no one can argue that I can get 30 minutes back, I can care my phone all the time, safely, securely. Well, Michael, I appreciate your time today.
Thanks so much for sharing your insight. No, no, I love to tell stories, and I love to share what we are seeing and doing to help a mobile technology adoption across the federal government. Again, we've been talking about how to enable a high-security mobile workforce in the federal government, having to speak with Michael Campbell, his general manager for the Provoro government solutions. For Information Security Media Group, I'm Tom Field.
Thank you very much.