Governmental companies are an easy and popular target for cybercriminals because of the sensitive nature of stored information. If you are an entity using or accessing this highly confidential data, do not let increasing cyber threats put you in a vulnerable situation.
Organizations or vendors must comply with the CJIS Security Policy for maintaining utmost safety. CJIS compliance can be daunting but is a must-follow strategy to secure crucial criminal justice information. Learn how F1IT can extend an integrated security platform to simplify and future-proof your agency’s safety systems. With us, you can discover how the latest trends can help your entity’s cyber profile.
Quick Background
Every day, law enforcement agencies across the United States access CJIS databases to investigate illegal activities and examine crime-related statistics. CJIS, or Criminal Justice Information Services Division, established in 1992, is a high-tech hub by the FBI to assist various departments in fighting data breaches and security threats.
But since digitization emerged, it changed the entire internet landscape, amplifying the risk of cyber threats. An Internet Crime Report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center discloses that around 791,790 Americans fell prey to cyber crimes in 2020, with losses over $4.1 billion, which is a whopping 69% year-over-year increase.
Thus, CJIS extends a well-established security policy to keep sensitive data secure. It bifurcates into 13 fundamental compliance requirements for cloud vendors, corporate networks, local agencies, and organizations to follow during their tenure. In short, organizations that do not comply with the criminal justice information security policy cannot access the crucial data held by the FBI.
What is CJIS?
CJIS is the largest division within the FBI that acts as a central repository storing all criminal justice information. The CJIS policies ensure that companies dealing with this “sensitive data” must stay compliant regarding data security and encryption. If the data, including fingerprints, government documents, background checks, and suspect interviews, get into the wrong hands, it can create havoc amongst security agencies and the public.
The division, thus, stays up to date with the latest technology changes and works on controlling crimes relating to system breaches or shared data. Moreover, for any organization to use these services, they must be CJIS compliant by adhering to its standard security policies.
The Importance of CJIS Compliance
In today’s time, cyberattacks are growing bigger in size, scale, and damage. Thus, compliance with the necessary security systems such as CJIS or, for that matter, even CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification) is getting critical, even more so when it involves law enforcement or the local, state, and federal government data.
Where CMMC measures the maturity of an organization’s cybersecurity procedures across various levels and domains, much like the security standards of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, CJIS compliance ensures the valuable and sensitive criminal justice information remains accessible to those who can protect this information.
The criminal justice community (including prosecutors, jails, law enforcement, probation, and pretrial services) uses this data for criminal and civil purposes. Noncompliance can leave the data susceptible to theft, unauthorized access, spamming, malware, or illicit tracking.
These weaknesses can lead to inappropriate use of confidential information, which is why IT companies like ours perform a gap analysis for institutions, create a practical action plan, and ultimately establish milestones to secure systems. Otherwise, noncompliance by any department can deny access, transmission, or storage of CJI services and data.
Are You CJIS Compliant?
CJIS makes crime data accessible to relevant agencies, but organizations must maintain a security standard to utilize this data since breaches are getting widespread. At F1IT, we work with companies seeking CJIS compliance. If you aren’t, we will help you adhere to the following (primarily technical) requirements and get your organization up to date:
- Establishing formal info exchange agreements amongst agencies
- Training employees to comply with CJIS standards
- Having an IRP in place to recover from security incidents in a timely. fashion
- Allowing only role-based (or based on location, time, and network address) access control
- Making the needed security configurations and installations
- Monitoring who, when, and why someone has access to the CJI data
- Using multi-factor authentication to confirm access by different users
- Rigorously screening the contractors, employees, or vendors having access to CJIS
- Performing software or hardware updates to systems that store CJI (when necessary)
- Ensuring media protection, i.e., proper use and disposal
- Maintaining overall network protection with antivirus, firewalls, data encryption, application blacklisting or whitelisting, or Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS)
- Preparing for weekly internal audits as well as yearly external audits by the CJIS Audit Unit (CAU) or CJIS Systems Agency (CSA)
- Formulating an “acceptable use policy” for mobiles, laptops, computers, or tablets, similar to on-premises devices
- These changes can be simplified when you hire a trusted and reputable company with the right resources and expertise to meet the CJIS compliance requirements.
Unlock CJIS Compliant Digital Workflows with F1IT
F1IT compliance experts are well versed with the latest CJIS security protocols. We can help you develop a roadmap and documentation to fix gaps when preparing for an audit and ensure complete compliance. Our team can help you:
- Comply with the CJIS security standards
- Protect CJI stored cloud data from unauthorized users
- Provide seamless recipient access, employ easy to use protective measures, as well as quick installation to get all users up and running
- Create smooth access for external collaborators and recipients for a digital workflow that supports prompt delivery and data security
- Detect unauthorized configurations, jailbroken devices, and/or software or applications
Accessing the sensitive criminal justice data doesn’t have to be complicated; neither does becoming CJIS compliant. Don’t wait until you run into a time-consuming and expensive compliance violation.
F1IT allows for easy CJIS compliance and makes sure the team is with you at every step of the way. We can conduct a compressive assessment for your organization and draft and implement a mitigation or remediation plan for full compliance. Not just that, we also transfer our knowledge to you for better understanding.
Get started today – write to us at info@f1it.com and understand how we can help you get protected.