Clamor for mobile devices may help speed IT acquisition.

• Author: Jean, Grace V.
• Position: Cybersecurity

* Pentagon officials have a bad case of commercial electronics envy: They see all the smartphones and tablets that civilians use and they want to put those same gadgets into the hands of their troops. The problem is they cannot acquire the hardware or software fast enough through the Defense Department's traditional weapon buying process. Moreover they face a tough challenge of securing those personal mobile devices against would-be hackers.

Attacks on wireless devices are expected to explode this year as hacker conventions home in on mobile technology. There are more than 600 variants of attacks for mobile devices specifically, said Tom Keller Mann, chief technology officer for Air Patrol Corp., a Columbia, Md.-based firm that specializes in information technology and wireless security systems.

Hackers are becoming more creative in their tactics, he said during a panel discussion at an Association for Enterprise Information conference in Alexandria, Va. He told attendees that

At one of the hacker conventions in Europe, A participant set up an antenna array that functioned like a cell tower. He was able to put malaria code down to take over mobile devices. At Microsoft Corp., engineers erected a similar system and demonstrated how easily they could hijack 150 phones in the building.

"We know once a blueprint of that attack is created at these conferences, people can retrofit their weapons around that capability," he said.

Protecting handhelds is a problem that the Defense Department will have to tackle after it solves the larger challenge: putting hands on the devices in the first place.

Pentagon officials spend billions or dollars annually on defense information technology, yet troops complain that the gadgets, computers and software those investments provide are obsolete or rapidly falling behind the digital curve.

That's because the current acquisition process follows an evolutionary "waterfall" approach, said John Gilligan, president of the Gilligan Group Inc., a Virginia-based consulting firm that specializes in government information technology. Programs that follow this step-by-step procedure in which requirements are first developed and then followed by funding and finally acquisition, typically last 91 months. The process often demands the program to become budget-centric.

Gilligan's firm conducted a study that proposes a new model for IT acquisition. Under the proposed process, projects that previously would have lasted several...