DISA’s unclassified mobility solution adds capabilities, keeps costs down

The Department of Defense (DOD) Mobility Program is continuing to expand its unclassified service offerings into fiscal year 2019, and the good news is — they’re being offered at fiscal year 2018 prices.

The Defense Mobility Unclassified Capability (DMUC) is currently in use on more than 120,000 mobile devices, which until recently was limited to organizations using Defense Enterprise Email (DEE).

“We’re happy to extend DMUC to those wishing to bring their native email addresses,” said Jake Marcellus, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Mobility Portfolio manager. “Over the last couple years the program has really taken off, almost quadrupling in users.”

As spotlighted in the DISA director’s latest Drumbeat, DMUC continues to roll out new features, such as the Apple device enrollment program.

Additional improvements include automating the on-boarding process, growing the mobile application store to more than 1,000 supported apps, and providing derived credentialing to send and receive encrypted email. Upcoming features include a digital signature app for PDF documents (a first in DOD), mobile endpoint protection, mobile content management, and assisting organizations with forensics scanning of their DMUC devices.

“DMUC continues to be agile and effective,” said Al Smith, DMUC program manager.

Most recently, DMUC supported the Army’s Hurricane Florence relief efforts in North and South Carolina by approving and deploying apps to assist with their missions.

“Our flash to bang, from vetting to deploying, was less than two hours,” Smith said.

The Air Force also recently leveraged DMUC to support its test and evaluation (T&E) of a mobile app for data capture and transactions related to aircraft maintenance.

“The Air Force contacted us with a very aggressive T&E schedule. We were able to perform comprehensive app security testing and deploy the app in the DMUC app store, meeting the Air Force schedule,” Smith said. “This app improves aircraft availability by giving maintainers more time turning wrenches and less time walking to a terminal. We continue to seek opportunities to ‘operationalize’ DMUC.”

At the beginning of fiscal year 2018, DISA announced service costs would decrease from $7.54 to $4.31 per device — per month. At the start of fiscal year 2019, costs for the enhanced service will remain the same.

“If I am an organization with a mission to do ‘xyz’, why would I want to commit resources, worry about the latest software update, manage contracts, run an enterprise mobility management platform, oversee the Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG), manage license purchase and expiration, or monitor and react to threats?” Smith asked. “We want mission partners to rely on DISA’s DMUC to do that for them.

“We want DOD organizations large and small to understand this is what we do. We don’t operate tanks, fly aircraft, or conduct foot patrols. We manage the DOD’s enterprise mobile information technology service,” Smith said.

DISA manages and maintains the required authority to operate, ensures STIG compliance, executes U.S. Cyber Command and Joint Force Headquarters – DOD Information Networks directives, while at the same time monitoring the network, Smith said. “Most don’t realize the complexity of taking commercial enterprise mobility management and placing it in the DODIN.”

Transitioning an organization that isn’t using the Department’s enterprise email service to DMUC isn’t an overnight endeavor, Smith explained.

Due to the different email domains, infrastructure variations, and unique mission requirements of DOD organizations, it requires some initial front-end work to connect to customers’ non-DEE email exchange environments.

“Several organizations see the immediate value in switching over and eliminating the need to manage their own mobility infrastructure, saving the organization time, resources, and money. We truly enjoy the planning work to execute this and have been supporting non-DEE organizations for a while,” Smith said.

The DMUC program office has received a number of requests from DOD and federal organizations who want to use their native email client with the DMUC service, Smith said.

“The DMUC team wants to say ‘yes we can’ (to all potential customers) until something makes us say no,” Smith said.

For more information about DISA’s unclassified and classified offerings, visit the Mobility User Corner at https://disa.deps.mil/ext/cop/dod_mobility (Common Access Card required) or contact the DISA Mission Partner Engagement Office.

Posted October 23, 2018