US DoD, Pentagon Explores Samsung, Apple Devices for Better Networking Strategy

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has just spiced up the raging smartphone war between Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc., with Blackberry sure to be a potential casualty of war, as the Pentagon announced it is currently working to award separate security approvals to the two companies as part of a wider plan to improve its communications network.

The two companies and their product devices will have to go through a different set of security tests before actually being handed over to employees of the US DoD.

The first approval will test Samsung's Galaxy line of smartphones. The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), the agency that authorizes commercial technology for Pentagon use, wants to ensure that Samsung's Knox security software meets the standards of the Pentagon's so-called Security Technology Implementation Guide.

In the second, separate approval, DISA will scrutinize if Apple's iOS 6 conforms to a different security-requirement guide, so that iPhones and iPads may be used by the employees.

In both approval, the use of Samsung and Apple smartphones are only applicable for nonclassified communications, such as email and Web browsing.

"We are working towards establishing a multi-vendor environment that supports a variety of devices and operating systems, to include Samsung, Apple and BlackBerry," Lieutenant Colonel Damien Pickart, a Pentagon spokesman, said.

"A key objective of the plan is to establish a department-wide mobile enterprise solution that permits the use of the latest commercial technology such, as smart phones and tablets," he added.

Although the DoD employs more than three million personnel, not all were issued devices. Its BlackBerry users were accounted at 470,000, Apple users at 41,000 and people with Android devices were at 8,700.

Although the Pentagon isn't closing in on BlackBerry, the move could pave for its eventual demise from the department. After all, the no. 1 and no. 2 positions among both smartphones and tablets globally belong to Samsung and Apple.

"Once we are certified by the government, more easily we can convince others, the bankers and also big enterprise and so on," Young Lee, Samsung Executive Vice President and head of the company's European operations, said in a meeting in London in April.