The Criminal Justice Information Services is essential to fighting crime and encompasses fingerprint data, criminal background checks, and other vital pieces of information for national security organizations. Compliance can be a challenge for businesses because it requires a bit of training, high end software, and carefully controlled access points. Here are a few steps you can take for maintaining CJIS compliance.
Implement Encryption
The cost of CJIS compliance is dependent on the size and scale of an organization or business. As such, every business needs to use encryption for a variety of purposes, such as protecting user access points, storing digital information, establishing access control mechanisms to restrict users, and transporting digital information. Small businesses need only work with the local police force to set up an on-site storage server and set up a few AP’s for officers to access data. Larger companies will need to work with the metropolitan police department or state police force since they will be storing much more information.
Training
There should always be a CJIS Systems Officer on staff to ensure everything is within standard compliance. They need to be trained on standards for personnel who have access to CJI in the agency, policies for hardware and software that transfers and stores CJI, and standards for outsources companies that have access to CJI.
Making CJI Data Available
Law enforcement has to balance security with ease of access, which can be difficult depending on the amount of information. Creating an AP at a secure location allows easy monitoring, but may make it tough for law enforcement to gain access quickly enough. Your business needs to weigh the pros and cons of AP placement and ensure there is a solid incident response plan in place should the worst happen.
Technology Fracturing
CJIS has specific security requirements but it is left up to the business to choose which systems they use. Ensure your information isn’t spread across a variety of different systems so that when disaster strikes, law enforcement is able to quickly and cleanly access the information they need.
CJIS Cloud
The National Data Exchange is a massive warehouse of data that law enforcement uses to track criminal records. Your own information from your business can be added to this storage space for ease of access, but make sure you check with the local police force to make sure this is advisable based on your line of work and information. This isn’t the only way to store information and there could be a cheaper solution based on what type of work you do.