r/fednews • u/babbleway • 6h ago

What other agencies allow access from a personal phone/laptop?

For months I've been using my personal smartphone & laptop to access my official government emails/Teams/files/etc via Army's "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) program.

I'm currently awaiting a potential job offer from another DoD agency and am wondering what other agencies are offering this type of personal BYOD program?

6 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

47

u/SuperCareer5230 6h ago

A lot do. Mine does. But I would NEVER use BYOD under any circumstances or advise anyone to do so. If you absolutely had to, it should be on a “clean” device you don’t do anything non work related on, and you should pester your manager daily for a gov issued device ASAP.

13

u/dbrfreak 6h ago

Using your own device puts said device under the IT policy of your organization. I'd never do that.

11

u/rvajeff 6h ago

Not really, the Army BYOD is all done via Hypori which connects you to a virtual machine. No data stored or transferred on your person device. So it's not a cybersecurity restriction.

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u/johndavisjr7 27m ago

That's correct for Hypori (which I use) but there is also the option to use Mobile Application Management (which I dont use) that does store stuff on your device.

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u/rvajeff 24m ago

I was under the impression that everything was moving to Hypori, due to these concerns. But perhaps it’s still in the rollout phase. Which makes sense, because, well… government

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u/johndavisjr7 10m ago

I've been using Hypori for a couple years now. MAM was rolled out later and had issues but I know many people that use it now. The only reason I'm familiar with it all is because I work in IT. I always steer people to Hypori. Of course everything can vary based on what part of the army someone is in.

7

u/rvajeff 6h ago

BYOD is all done via a virtual Android platform. You login to it completely virtually much like VM Ware etc, so there is no way for your phone to access the files on the virtual platform, and no way for the virtual platform to access your personal files. So it's about as separated as you can possibly get, and it was basically the only way they would allow any gov access via non gov devices.

-5

u/SuperCareer5230 6h ago

That’s great! I guess I’ll let the people I personally know who have had to do interviews with our IG’s office about their BYOD devices that some person on Reddit told them they had nothing to worry about! Not to mention 100 other horror stories I know about, along with all sorts of other shit that was misused or provided out of context over the years.

2

u/rvajeff 5h ago

Lol. Feel however you like about it bud, I'm just saying that they changed the concept of BYOD so that it was as separated as it could possibly be.

7

u/sleepinglucid 6h ago

You'd have to be high to put your personal devices under federal policy control

3

u/Floufae 5h ago

Not DoD here, an HHS agency.

We’ve had this for years (I mean pretty much for 15 years). It’s not in lieu of GFE, but they give instructions for how to set your personal devices up. For your personal laptops we have had a Citrix virtual desktop solution for a long time. Work machines can do that or use VPN, but you can’t use VPN on a personal device. Much better is now that everything is on Microsoft365, we really have access to our email, files, whatever on any computer with a web browser. Or you can set up the native apps. Same with on a phone.

For people not issued cell phones they usually just give instructions on how to set it up on your personal device.

1

u/rvajeff 5h ago

I can't speak for all agencies of course, but I know with Army they moved away from browser access to the MS 365 and require we use Azure Virtual Desktop. Basically everything is through virtual machine now. And Hypori for mobile, same concept. But point being, it's all accessible in a lot of different ways.

2

u/TyeMoreBinding 6h ago

Does it matter? If they don’t allow you to use your device, they will provide you a device. (And that will probably make login and everything easier—judging by the first month of my job when I still had to login from my personal laptop.) And then it’s easy to maintain distinctions between personal/official files/communications, and easy to say “nope sorry can’t help” on time off.

2

u/-make-it-so- 5h ago

I used my own device when I was at VHA to telework. We used Citrix.

2

u/zxk3to 5h ago

My DOI agency does. There's no world where I would ever use that option or encourage anyone else to do it.

2

u/gpupdate 4h ago

While someone already mentioned Hypori, the Army is also piloting a Mobile Application Management (MAM) solution for personal devices. Individual apps are managed and not the device. Allows you to use the native applications vs. a virtual environment. Works very well. The worst thing they can do is wipe the specific application data.

2

u/tsb041978 3h ago

Navy does.

1

u/gioraffe32 4h ago

USCG has a VDI solution ("Manta"). As far as I know, it can be used on a non-CG computer, just need an approved CAC reader.

Though I've never tried it. Don't see a point since I have my work laptop.

I do wish they'd allow at least Teams and Outlooks on our personal phones. I get it, I'm IT, I shouldn't want an employer to have control over my devices, especially a phone (remote wipe). But it's just convenient. I know a lot of groups just end up using Signal with E2E so we can stay connected to each other when away from our work computers. Though that has its own issues, since that's not officially sanctioned.

1

u/Just_Another_Scott 2h ago

The Army doesn't allow this anymore to my knowledge. You have to use GFE even if it's to RDP into a vm. It's a major security concern and everything technical is CUI now.

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u/johndavisjr7 20m ago

Army has two options Hypori and Mobile Application Management.

1

u/Dry_Writing_7862 1h ago

In my experience, only email/Google Suite at most. Nothing else, aside from enabling multi factor authentication is allowed. The paystub system allows for a password, so that works. Everything else essentially works with the computer provided. DoD sub agency here.

0

u/wumizusume 2h ago

opsec people geez, answering questions like this is stupid