"We haven't jumped into BYOD because of policy issues in the government," said Donald Kachman, director of mobile and security assurance for client services, enterprise systems engineering at the Department of Veterans Affairs. While the VA is actively pursuing pilot projects, for instance with tablets in hospitals, the main concern is, "When we put a mobile device in, are we really replacing something? Can we manage the device? Can we secure the devices?" So much is driven by what Google and technologies will allow, he pointed out.

The latest generation of smartphones and tablets still have to be considered as a new phenomenon going back only a few years and "vulnerabilities aren't well-known," Kachman said.

Anil Karmel, chief technology officer at the National Nuclear Security Agency, which manages the nation's nuclear weapons stockpiles and facilities such as Los Alamos National Laboratory, said policies under development there "will help us get to a BYOD stance."

For security purposes, NNSA is looking at use of what's called "containerization" to separate out personal and business data. In the end, this will all likely be unified around the virtual desktop infrastructure and cloud-based approach that NNSA already supports in a multi-platform virtual-machine environment.

"It's the same virtual desktop and it follows me where I need to go," he said, and mobile devices, including BYOD, are expected to be a part of that. NNSA hopes to issue its BYOD policy soon, "and it's imperative we do this right," he said.