Law enforcement is one of the most important jobs in America that ensures you live a safe, happy life every day. But how do they manage to do their job and get the criminal, or log arrests, or make sure they are doing their job correctly? The answer to all these questions is through IT support, specifically CJIS compliance. This article will give you a brief rundown on just how important CJIS compliance is and how it affects law enforcement and how they operate.
Law enforcement must strictly adhere to CJIS compliance to make sure they are both within the boundaries of the law and executing their job correctly. CJIS stands for the Criminal Justice Information Services, a database created and managed by the FBI that stores information necessary to catching criminals of all types, as well as performing background checks and tracking criminal activities. Police and other law enforcement use this database to update profiles on criminals and keep track of their whereabouts, such as incarceration, on parole, number of tickets or violations, etc. This means that aside from using their own local police network, they are also using a federal network to keep tabs on everyone. This ensures they are up to date on any case that may fall onto their lap in the future and that they have all the necessary information to deal with it when the time comes.
But how important is compliance? Police need to make sure that their data security and encryption is top grade so that outside sources can’t get in and mess with the data. CJIS has security standards that law enforcement must adhere to so that their data is safe from outside sources. This includes a limited number of login attempts, password changes, weekly audit reviews, session locks after a certain period of time, access restriction based on location, time, etc. Following these rules keeps law enforcement within federal regulations and much safer from online criminals that would attempt to steal or modify data that they have stored.
Without CJIS compliance, things can go wrong very quickly. People can get a hold on private information, potentially using it to harm others. Criminals could escape from crimes due to loopholes in the system or mistakes made while entering data. Innocent people could be flagged as dangerous from a careless mistake. Staying compliance means keeping people safe, in a physical and figurative sense. It is the job of law enforcement to make sure people are always safe and treated fairly, and by staying CJIS compliant, they are able to do just that. IT support for law enforcement can involve many aspects, but compliance might be chief among them.