Some Governments Opt for Traditional Mobile Security Tools

Municipalities are always under the gun to get the most out of every budget dollar. That’s why when Overland Park, Kan., started shopping around for mobile security, it decided to go with an established security suite.

CIO Vicki Irey says Overland Park purchased the Sophos Complete Security Suite through a state contract that offered favorable pricing. “Sophos had the complete package of anti-virus and web filtering software as well as mobile device management and application features,” she says.

The city currently supports about 212 mobile devices, and Irey expects that to expand in the years ahead. She says the Sophos suite enables her department to whitelist apps, tap location features and remotely wipe devices if they’re lost or stolen. The software also offers a passcode lock and screen timeouts.

Chris Silva, a Gartner research director, says manufacturers such as Sophos have done a lot of work to tie together many of their security offerings.

“When organizations go with an existing security vendor or adopt a bundled suite of mobile management tools, they may get preferential pricing or receive baseline mobile device management or mobile application management features at little or no cost.”

Stick with What You Know

Martin Moen, IT infrastructure manager for the Iowa Workforce Development Agency, says his group uses the mobility features in McAfee’s Complete Endpoint Protection Enterprise to support the agency’s 125 mobile devices.

“We’ve been a McAfee customer for years, so the benefits of going with a point MDM solution did not exceed the upfront costs, especially since the McAfee software lets us do remote wipes and push applications out to our mobile devices,” Moen says.

Moen says McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator lets him manage all of the agency’s notebooks, desktops and mobile devices. “It gives me a full view of the entire employee,” he says.