Montana County Deploys NetMotion Wireless Technology For Secure Mobile Communications
NetMotion Wireless, a provider of mobile productivity and management software, recently announced that Gallatin County, Mont. which encompasses the City of Bozeman, has deployed NetMotion's mobile Virtual Private Network (VPN) on laptops used by area police and fire department personnel.
NetMotion's software, Mobility XE, is used in more than 60 percent of the nation’s largest public safety organizations, those with more than 500 sworn officers, to maintain secure and stable wireless data communications for their mobile field deployments.
With nearly 90,000 residents, Gallatin County is the most populated and fastest growing county in southwest Montana. Gallatin County covers more than 2,500 square miles of mountain lands varying in topography and includes river valleys, snow-capped peaks, open ranch lands, and the County Seat of Bozeman is home to about 40,000 residents. Nearly half of all the land in Gallatin County is under public ownership by the Gallatin National Forest, state of Montana, Bureau of Land Management or the National Park Service.
“Public safety personnel across the county now have access to advanced wireless communications that enable us to better serve the region,” said Bruce Cunningham, CAD System Administrator for Gallatin County 911 Communications. “We cover a wide geographic area with inconsistent wireless data coverage, but NetMotion Wireless’ software helps us manage that issue and improve the productivity of our field personnel. Their software provides our staff with secure access to critical information in the field.”
“Gallatin County is a classic example of how multiple government agencies can rely on NetMotion Wireless to meet the needs of both their mobile personnel and IT departments,” said Pam Cory, vice president of marketing with NetMotion Wireless. “It is imperative that their public safety personnel have secure access to time-sensitive information, and maintain application stability, even across networks and outside wireless coverage areas. In addition, NetMotion provides centralized policy and management tools that enable administrators to easily manage large numbers of mobile devices and applications."
With secure and seamless wireless connection ensured by Mobility XE, public safety personnel can e-mail, write reports, access records management and other sensitive information from the department’s network, all from their police cruisers or fire trucks, throughout the region. Mobility XE encrypts all data transmitted between the Mobility client and server with FIPS 140-2 validated AES encryption, in 128-bit, 192-bit or 256-bit strengths. FIPS-validated encryption is the U.S. government's standard for securing non-classified information, making AES the industry’s security standard.
Gallatin County also utilizes NetMotion Wireless’ Policy Module and Mobile Analytics Module which together provide IT administrators with a system-wide view of device activity and reporting, including application use, device connections, bandwidth consumption, wireless network status, battery life and much more. With these modules, administrators can customize policies to better manage application and network access, quarantine lost or stolen devices, and prioritize bandwidth for critical transmissions and applications.
Gallatin County joins a number of government agencies across the country that rely on Mobility XE to mitigate some of the most common challenges in mobile deployments today, including end-to-end security, application stability, and seamless roaming between Wi-Fi and wide-area cellular networks. NetMotion optimizes wireless performance and automatically connects users to the fastest available network.