Cloud for Law Enforcement
- its relevancy and benefits
Are you on the cloud? Cloud
computing is no longer a new concept,
as government agencies, commercial
companies and even individual citizens
have adopted the cloud en masse for
wide use and implementation. The
benefits of cloud storage are available
for all, and its infrastructure is
becoming the standard approach for IT
resources.
COST-EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT
FOR PUBLIC AGENCIES
Public Safety agencies have
some specific challenges that make
cloud an attractive option for these
organizations. There is also the desire
to increase spending on agency
headcount for sworn officers, rather
than civilian staff, such as IT personnel.
The assumption is cloud providers
will be significantly more efficient
and perhaps reliable from a systems
management and maintenance
perspective than systems run in a
dedicated computing facility owned
and managed by the agency.
A cloud infrastructure can also
24
California Police Chief | www.californiapolicechiefs.org
enable an agency to shift funds for
staffing sworn officers rather than
having to bolster civilian staff for IT
positions. Cloud-provisioned resources
can be significantly more efficient,
and perhaps more reliable, from a
systems management and maintenance
perspective than systems resources run
in a dedicated data center owned and
managed by public agencies. Instead,
agencies can be freed from the need
to periodically upgrade hardware and
software to stay current and supported.
BENEFICIAL CONSIDERATIONS
FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT
While there are clearly some
compelling reasons to make the move
to cloud-based resources, there are
special circumstances and required
standards that must be considered
to make cloud computing a realistic
option for law enforcement agencies.
The Criminal Justice Information
Services (CJIS) Security Policy must
be the basis for managing public
safety data. Cloud providers for
law enforcement solutions have to
understand and comply with what
By Peter Coldicott, IBM Distinguished Engineer,
CTO, Safer Planet Product Development
Member of the IBM Academy of Technology, IBM
Master Inventor
CJIS requires and be open to audit by
agencies and organizations that look to
use their platforms. Today, this audit
accessibility is not a service offered by
all cloud providers.
Even for cloud-hosted
organizations that are CJIS compliant,
recent public data breaches that have
occurred worldwide raise legitimate
concerns about security. If a given
cloud provider has enough clout and
resources, they are far more likely to
have the expertise on staff, security
infrastructure and processes deployed
than individual agencies or state
and regional governments. Platform
security is a fact of everyday life for
a cloud service provider, and their
ability to do business is predicated on
being secure and well protected. While
there is potential for lapse in security, I
believe the odds of a successful breach
are significantly lower at the cloud
service provider level than at the law
enforcement agency level.
Other potential cloud-related
benefits to consider are financial
resources, which can raise some tough