By Paul Hemsley

Apple users in government organisations will be able to access sensitive internal data with the same level of protection as if they were on the internal network.

Security company, SonicWALL has launched the Mobile Connect App, which provides users ‘VPN on demand’ and encrypted traffic whenever users attempt to access protected internal resources.

SonicWALL vice president, worldwide sales, Marvin Blough said the benefit for local government using the product is managers and employers can now control what data employees are attempting to access and who is trying to access it.

“If you have a local government that has people using iPhones or iPads, they’re accessing government resources from home or wherever they are, so there’s no way to control what’s happening on that device and what data is coming back and forth,” Mr Blough said.

According to Mr Blough, the app can be used for both fleet devices and users’ own devices they bring to work.

“What you had in the past is you would establish a VPN tunnel, and once that is established, it is no different than if I walked in to your office and plugged the ethernet into my computer, so I’m now on the network,” he said.

He said the difference is because the app goes via SSL/VPN instead of IP, there is the ability to identify that device and authenticate the user.

“Since we know that, we can then grant access to whatever parts of the network we want to grant access to, so if we want someone to have access to the financial systems, they can get that, but not the human resources, so it’s just like they’re on the local network,” Mr Blough said.

According to Mr Blough, the principle applies in “just about any entity, be it a government or commercial enterprise because the data’s the data”.

“Government data is sensitive data, it’s about citizens, so the data has to be protected, so it absolutely applies to federal, state and local government,” he said.

Mr Blough said the app is “going to be huge in education” because there are so many students using devices for classes and homework and there are parents accessing school networks.

“It allows control over what parts of the network they’re getting access to,” he said.

The app can be downloaded for free from Apple’s online iTunes store.