Net App Connect provides a secure platform for BYOD
Connecting state and local government leaders
Connect lets users view, work with and share information while it stays safely behind the network firewall.
Allowing an agency’s mobile users to securely access data that resides on network servers is one of the greatest challenges of any BYOD or mobile device management policy. In order to maintain the security of the data a user is accessing, some sort of secure container needs to be implemented.
Although some operating systems, such as BlackBerry 10 on the Z10 smart phone, do this natively, not all do — and even if they did, they’d all do it differently. A single, enterprise-wide platform is often the best way to go.
NetApp recently announced the release of NetApp Connect, a way for mobile users to get secure and instant access to data stored on NetApp systems. It comes in the form of a network appliance that fetches documents from various servers and sends them out, on-demand, to devices that are running the NetApp Connect app. It is fairly seamless to the user while keeping files in the encrypted space in case the device is lost or stolen.
It keeps data behind the corporate firewall and out of the cloud, allowing users to stream, view, download, edit and pass on information securely, whether the data is on file shares, Microsoft SharePoint or served by Intranet web applications, the company said.
Connect currently is available for iOS devices from the Apple App Store, and NetApp said it will soon be available for other devices.
Many federal, state and local governmental organizations are already running NetApp services, and are planning to add NetApp Connect, such as the city of Melrose, Mass. “Our police force, fire department, school system, and other municipal services all run on NetApp, and all require mobile access to data that sits behind the firewall,” said Jorge Pazos, the city’s CIO. “However, the solution we’re forced to employ today to ensure data security to remote users is less than elegant, to say the least. NetApp Connect promises to streamline mobile data access and reduce the pain points our users are experiencing today. We look forward to exploring a proof of concept this summer.”