FirstNet, AT&T announce nationwide availability of subscriber-paid/BYOD offering
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FirstNet, AT&T announce nationwide availability of subscriber-paid/BYOD offering
In addition to protecting the FirstNet system, AT&T also offers a portfolio of security and device-management solutions that agencies can purchase to help secure end-user devices, Agnew said.
“The agency decides the level of security that they want,” he said. “We make the tools available to them and we make the education available to them. Typically, if an end user is touching a sensitive database … I can’t think of any implementation that we’ve done that didn’t have additional security enhancements—with device management, with mobile VPNs, with custom APNs—that directed and managed that traffic.
“So, it really depends on what the end user is doing, and it depends on the agency’s policies. We make the solutions available, but we don’t require any specific set of applications and enhancements. It’s up to the agency, and we educate the agency about what they should do.”
Agnew said that the subscriber-paid user certification—something that is audited annually to ensure that users are still with the public-safety agency—and the fact that a specific FirstNet SIM card is needed to access the FirstNet system also help provide security.
“[The FirstNet SIM card is] just another layer of security that protects access to the network,” Agnew said. “You can’t just have any general SIM and try to access the FirstNet network; you have to have that special SIM. It’s just that additional layer of security that we see is so important.”