Microsoft Office 365 now available for California law enforcement
State and Local governments continue to shift more applications to the cloud. This frees up valuable resources for more strategic, mission focused projects. The move to the cloud also enables more collaboration and ensures workloads can be accessed from anywhere, at any time, and from any device.
Nevertheless, Governments have very unique requirements for regulatory compliance around security and privacy that can make the transition challenging. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the areas of Healthcare and Public Safety. For police departments and criminal justice organizations, special — and more complex — considerations exist when departments look at moving to the cloud, as many use sensitive Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) data, which means certain handling parameters exist.
That’s why a critical milestone was reached this month in the State of California, as the Department of Justice and Microsoft jointly signed an agreement that confirms that Microsoft Office 365 has implemented technologies and processes that will enable California agencies that use it to meet the latest FBI CJIS Security Policy requirements (CJIS Security Policy version 5.2). This means that any California state Office 365 customer can now have its law enforcement agencies use Office 365 as the cloud productivity, communication and collaboration solution and still comply with CJIS. Just like we did with Texas, we worked closely with California officials to ensure that Microsoft offerings could meet the high demands of CJIS.
This is an important milestone for the State of California where cities from San Diego, to San Jose and Oakland, and counties like Santa Clara and San Mateo are all moving their productivity workloads to the cloud with Microsoft. And more are on their way. For example, just yesterday, the City of Long Beach City Council voted to go with Office 365, noting that Microsoft meets unique public safety requirements. The City noted:
“After this extensive review and analysis of each proposal, based on criteria set forth in the RFP document, Microsoft Office 365 was determined to have submitted the most qualified and responsive proposal. It provides more functionality than other solutions proposed and it meets the federal Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) security requirements applicable to state law enforcement agencies.”
Long Beach will join customers like Jon Walton of San Mateo, who noted: “The work that Microsoft has done to meet the requirements of California Law Enforcement agencies gives those of us migrating to Office 365’s Government Community Cloud the confidence that security and confidentiality is a primary priority for Microsoft in meeting the needs of their customers.”
At Microsoft we’re committed to helping our customers make the move to the cloud. We work closely with our customers, not just from a technology standpoint, but from a people and policy standpoint as well. A great example of this is the work we have done via our industry-leading terms and conditions around the HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (BAA) and CJIS FBI Security Policy requirements.
When it comes to privacy and security, Microsoft is committed to building cloud solutions that our government customers can trust and we continue to work to raise the bar on cloud services in the Public Sector market.
