• Has the physical controls required by Section 5.9 of the Policy.
• Its data centers are considered “physically secure locations” as defined in Section 5.9.1 of the Policy.
• Is operated by United States persons who have been screened in accordance with Section 5.12 of the Policy, completed Level 4 CJIS security awareness training, and signed the CJIS Security Addendum.
• Restricts the storage of Criminal Justice Information to the United States as required by Section 5.10.1.5 of the Policy.

Microsoft backs Azure Government with CJIS Management Agreements executed with state CJIS Systems Agencies so that all criminal justice agencies in a state can use Azure Government while respecting their compliance obligations under the CJIS Security Policy. Azure Government conformance with the CJIS Security Policy has been validated by the countless agencies using it having passed CJIS audits since 2014.

Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS)

Learn more about how Azure Commercial and Azure Government support Criminal Justice Information.

Read more

Manage Criminal Justice Information in Azure Commercial

On October 1, 2022, the FBI released CJIS Security Policy Version 5.9.1, and among its updates, the FBI enables criminal justice agencies to meet the requirements of the policy through technical controls alone, rather than through technical controls and screened personnel. In accordance with this updated policy, Microsoft announces the addition of Azure to our cloud platforms available for Criminal Justice Information. Microsoft customers can manage Criminal Justice Information in Azure and facilitate their compliance with the CJIS Security Policy v5.9.1 by first geo-restricting storage of Criminal Justice Information to the member countries of the CJIS Advisory Policy Board (United States, United States territories, Indian tribes, and Canada). For infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) workloads, customers can implement customer managed key (CMK) encryption through Azure Key Vault, a generally available and widely adopted option used today by many security-focused customers.

In addition to this new Azure option, Microsoft will continue its long-standing commitment to protecting Criminal Justice Information in Azure Government, which United States criminal justice agencies have used since 2014. A fundamental principle for using the cloud is an understanding of the shared responsibility model. An organization that manages a completely on-premises computing infrastructure has full responsibility for its security and compliance. Organizations leveraging cloud services share this responsibility with their cloud provider but are still accountable to the appropriate regulators. Criminal justice agencies must determine whether Azure Government or Azure Commercial is the appropriate cloud platform for their needs and should consult their state’s CJIS Systems Officer for questions on compliance in the cloud.

Choose the appropriate cloud platform for Criminal Justice Information

The Microsoft mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Criminal justice agencies manage especially sensitive data, and those in the United States can now choose between Azure Government with its proven combination of technical and personnel controls, and Azure Commercial with technical controls in accordance with CIJS Security Policy v5.9.1—only Microsoft can provide this kind of choice across the United States. Microsoft led the way for compliant use of the cloud by United States criminal justice agencies and with the release of CJIS Security Policy v5.9.1 continues this leadership.

United States criminal justice agencies can work with their Microsoft account teams to assess requirements and determine the appropriate cloud platform for managing their Criminal Justice Information.

Learn more

You can learn more about how Azure Commercial and Azure Government support Criminal Justice Information by visiting the Criminal Justice Information Services documentation page. Interested in discovering more Microsoft solutions for Public Safety and Justice? Visit our website to learn more.

The post Microsoft delivers Azure Commercial offering for Criminal Justice Information appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Technology is helping to rapidly change how you empower your law enforcement agency, improve operations, and protect communities. New solutions can help departments to gather, analyze, and share data rapidly to make better decisions faster, as well as help identify officers who might benefit from additional resources and services to support them. To help make better-informed decisions and deliver more impactful actions to increase the safety of people and the security of the communities you serve, law enforcement agencies need to:

• Ensure they can serve their communities while giving personnel the flexibility to work from anywhere and at any time.
• Empower cross-agency collaboration by sharing data, services, and innovation across jurisdictions and community groups.
• Build community trust and engagement by securing information, protecting infrastructure, and ensuring regulatory compliance.

During the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) 2020, Richard Zak, Director of Public Safety and Justice Solutions at Microsoft will host a session on how law enforcement leaders have addressed these critical challenges:

• From the Chicago Police Department, Sabih Khan, Deputy Chief for Strategic Initiatives, and Maggie Goodrich, Consultant at the University of Chicago Crime Lab and former Chief Information Officer at the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), will join Zak to discuss the launch of their new Officer Support System. The system was designed specifically to support officer health and wellness, a critical challenge facing law enforcement.
• Also joining the discussion will be Inspector Darren Henstock from the Digital Policing Division of the Western Australia Police Force. Over the past 18 months, the Western Australia Police Force has undergone a digital transformation, moving to secure cloud services and deploying BWC, alongside personally-issued mobile devices complete with a suite of apps and features supporting their Digital Policing Strategy to empower frontline officers and make their communities safer.

Learn more about how Microsoft empowers public safety and justice organizations.

The post How technology is increasing officer safety and operational efficiency appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

This is a top goal because, according to the FCC, a 1-minute decrease in response time reduces mortality rate from 6 to 5 percent (with a 17 percent drop in the total number of deaths).

So while state-of-the-art equipment and trained personnel are still integral to rapid response, the ability to use new and traditional data sources grows more important every day. The physical assets involved haven’t changed dramatically, but the possible connections between them have. Today, operators at emergency call centers (like 911 or 112) are putting together data from smart devices and other sources to help provide more—and more accurate—situational awareness information to first responders, faster than ever before.

The clock is ticking—for callers and first responders

Citizens’ service expectations have grown at least as fast as public safety IT solutions have. People are used to posting to retail and B2B brands’ social channels and getting a timely response, and to tracking their Uber Eats order as it journeys from the restaurant to their front door. These real-time connections between consumers requesting retail services and those who deliver them are now standard, and public agencies are getting on board too.

For example, until recently, if an emergency call center operator didn’t speak the same language as the person requesting help, adding a translation service to the conversation could take several minutes, costing precious time. But by coupling the call taker’s devices with services like Nimbus cloud aided dispatch (CAD) from Microsoft partner RapidDeploy, operators and first responders can get real-time translation on their mobile devices. The RapidDeploy service uses Microsoft Azure services to automatically translate multiple languages, even within the same conversation.

Likewise, companies like Microsoft partners RapidSOS and Capita are addressing the difficulty of getting a caller’s exact location. With no app required, Capita’s 911Eye, 112Eye, and 999Eye services enable callers with smartphones to stream live footage from their phone’s camera into an emergency service control room. These services also provide the caller’s location by way of GPS coordinates, which is faster and more accurate than traditional cellular tower triangulation. There are many other related services that incorporate data from a variety of sources, like the OnStar in-vehicle driver’s assistance program. OnStar emergency calls can be initiated by humans or automotive systems, with real-time data on things like location and vehicle damage while also enabling voice conversations between emergency call center operators and vehicle occupants.

When sending help, agencies are reducing response times with GPS services like Azure-based Esri’s smart Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping software. Instead of relying on map books or familiarity with a neighborhood, operators and first responders can gather, analyze, and share up-to-the-minute information on congestion and road closures, supplemented with views from traffic and police car cameras. Now that first responders can find the fastest routes to emergency scenes with minimal effort, they are freed up to concentrate on situational awareness information, like weather or social media data.

The future is within reach

On the horizon are smart-city technologies that coordinate traffic signals and use social media outputs to warn citizens away from emergency sites, to reduce chaos and keep people safer.

Public agencies’ need for updated IT solutions, like cyber resilience and disaster recovery, has grown, but their budgets haven’t. Thankfully, it’s possible to use cloud services to add intelligence to existing capital expenditure IT investments, adding analytics and data ingestion capabilities without adding hardware. Over time, agencies can replace legacy systems with natively modern cloud-based technologies. Microsoft invests $1 billion annually in Azure to help fortify customers’ environments against threats.

With advances in technology and service expectations happening faster and faster, this is a great time to start looking into the latest intelligent solutions. Download The future of public safety and justice e-book to explore a variety of future-proof, data-driven solutions designed for public safety and justice agencies.

The post Digital tools help reduce fire and crime incident response times appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

We sat down with Chief Andrew Olesen of the Cedar Rapids, IA Fire Department to discuss the importance of data to his operations and the impact to their citizens. Chief Olesen uses a records management software (RMS) called Emergency Reporting to track and analyze important fire incident and patient care data.

Tell us a little about Cedar Rapids and how you interact with your community.

Cedar Rapids is the second largest city in Iowa, and our department serves over 130,000 people. Our fire department consists of nine fire stations with 145 employees, who respond to 12,500 incidents a year.

What challenges led you to look for a solution like Emergency Reporting?

The State of Iowa changed data requirements for all services that provide emergency medical services, and we needed a compliant solution. NEMSIS, the National Emergency Medical Services Information System, is a universal standard for patient care information resulting from a call to 9-1-1 is collected. This requirement was the primary driver.

We’ve always been a data-driven organization, but the data collected wasn’t always at the level we would have liked due to the legacy reporting system we had used for the past 15 years or so. The system was hosted on-premises and needed to be installed and maintained on each machine. We had a limited number of users who could be on the system at the same time. We had an issue with data quality and integrity and spent a lot of time doing QA to ensure it was accurate. We were the complete opposite of cloud-based.

We needed a stronger Records Management System (RMS) that would also enable us to share data and analysis across organizations, with the City Council and other agencies, as well as with the public. We want the community to be able to track what’s going on in their neighborhoods and engage with the fire department.

What benefits are you seeing at both the Fire Department level and in how you can better help your community?

Incident documentation has improved, we have a better handle on report completion, and we’re tracking information related to emergency incidents that we couldn’t before. Our Permit System has seen the most remarkable improvement – we went from all paper to a fully digitized electronic record. All information is available to all employees at any time. That’s the power of the secure cloud. Employees like it, because they can log in and do their reports from the truck or on the scene of the incident, which saves them time and reduces errors that were occurring from time lapse between the incident and reporting.

What I’m most excited about is the risk assessment portion. We are now an accredited agency by Center for Public Safety Excellence. We’re using Emergency Reporting to document standardized risk assessment on the buildings and occupancies in our community. We handle 1000 occupancies a year in pre-planned risk assessment and are able to classify the risks of the buildings in community. The dispatch center has access to read only versions of occupancy files, so they can access emergency contact numbers to call if there is a fire after hours.

We can also now do inspections on-site. We inspect 4500 occupancies every year in Cedar Rapids for permit inspection and construction permits. Capturing data, such as emergency response calls on 9-1-1 as it happens, allows us to upload information to the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS), including data on buildings, people involved, items first ignited, square footage, and use of the building. If it’s a medical call, we capture patient’s medical evaluation, condition, and history.

Heat mapping and zone capability have been useful to our community. They can see what’s it like in their area of the community in four geographic planning zones to see how the fire department performs in those areas and what sorts of incidents are occurring in their neighborhoods.

Another great part of the solution is the pre-fire planning module that includes building familiarizations, where utility shut offs are, sprinkler systems, and the closest fire hydrant. We can then perform risk assessments based on building factors that help us plan for the future.

We understand you have Power BI resources within your organization. How did you decide to take that route, and what benefits are you seeing from having those resources in-house?

The city as a whole has a large infrastructure and takes data seriously. The City Council constantly wants us to talk about why and how we do things and make reportable, data-driven decisions. It is an integral responsibility of government to communicate to the public how they run operations and leverage technology to be more effective.

To that end, our IT department has started to use Power BI in a couple of different places: reporting and notification. What’s exciting about this is the historical reporting can now be reviewed to measure outcomes. Being attuned to what we’re doing and how we do it, allows us to make sure we are performing at the highest levels across all of our departments.

We can now set up notifications that let us know when certain events occur or don’t occur in much closer to real-time, instead of evaluating at the end of month and looking back at all of the data. By identifying trends much more quickly, we can see that when this scenario occurs, we want to address it this way – it helps them make more informed decisions.

What are your technology plans for the future?

We already provide daily reporting and tracking on response times to the public. When there are response times outside of the normal, we can now determine what is causing it. We also have a weekly or monthly report that goes to the City Council to keep them in the loop on issue resolution. The difference now is the way we can display and relate data – data visualization makes it very impactful to the council and what the data means to them.

Leveraging Emergency Reporting and Power BI, we’re planning to develop a customer facing dashboard next. Our time, incident, and medical data is now really tight, and we want to be able to share that.

Read more about Emergency Reporting’s solutions built on Microsoft Azure.

Learn more about Public Safety Digital Transformation by downloading Microsoft’s eBook.

The post Cedar Rapids Fire Department: How Data Analysis Helps Their Citizens appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Helping you keep your community safe

City leaders want fire service teams focused on keeping communities safe and not spending precious time and budget on equipment issues or being slowed down by unplanned downtime. They want the equipment fire fighters use to be up and running effectively so they’re empowered to successfully fight fires and save lives.

But keeping something as complicated as a fire truck maintained is no small task. There’s a reason a fire truck is referred to as a fire apparatus—it’s much more than just a truck, it’s a complex assembly of hundreds of systems.

Fire departments need a solution that goes beyond just fleet management to help them keep their mission-critical fire vehicles up and running—a solution that helps take some of the maintenance burden off of their already-stretched fire service staff.

“Maintenance is the number one priority,” says George Ehalt of Aurora, Colorado Fire Rescue. “A system that will track preventive maintenance schedules, identify mechanical issues before they become larger problems and detect trends associated with repairs. Aurora would also like a system that can notify key people that a problem has occurred, or is happening in real time so the appropriate action can be put in place sooner.”

That’s why I’m so excited about what our partner IDEX Fire & Safety is bringing to the table for fire departments. Today at the Fire Department Instructors’ Conference (FDIC), it announced Captium, the first connected vehicle platform designed specifically for first response apparatus and equipment. It enables increased apparatus uptime and effectiveness through operational insights, proactive reporting, real-time support, and extensive network compatibility. In other words, it helps make a fire apparatus smart.

Powered by Microsoft Azure and Windows 10 IoT Core, the Captium platform can extend cloud intelligence to the many edge devices on a fire apparatus. It’s a significant step beyond the typical fleet management system because it monitors the health of not just the chassis, but of the critical networked electrical controllers, multiplexing systems, and water flow components that make up the apparatus. Additionally, Captium enables superior electronics trouble shooting and support through real-time notifications, run-log recording, remote trouble shooting, and secure over-the-air device updates.

The solution is being debuted on E-One, KME, and Ferrara fire trucks, which are produced by REV Fire, an industry-leader in world-class rescue vehicles. Committed to uptime of its vehicles and new levels of support based on intelligence inside the vehicles, REV Fire collaborated with IDEX Fire & Safety to bring Captium to market.

“This revolutionary technology platform sets the stage for unmatched customer support and unparalleled future fireground operations,” says Jay Johnson, Vice President of Sales and Product Management at REV Fire. “We are establishing the fire apparatus as the ‘IoT Hub’ for the future fireground.”

Jeff Zook, Marketing Manager for Connected Solutions at IDEX Fire & Safety, echoes this shared vision for what vehicle connectivity and intelligence can mean for the fire service. “Our fundamental thesis is to create products that increase operator safety and return the most precious commodity in a 21^st-century economy back to first responders: time,” says Zook. “We firmly believe that this new proposition will drive positive changes for our customers, and having REV Fire share a similar vision made the decision to debut this new platform first on E-One, KME, and Ferrara vehicles a very easy one.”

Responding to citizens in need requires highly-trained people along with the right vehicles and equipment. IDEX and REV Fire are leading the way to make fire vehicles smarter and better able to support the mission of the fire service. By taking advantage of our cloud platform designed for government with its always-on resilience, dynamic scaling, and cutting-edge IoT capabilities, IDEX and REV Fire are making fire service vehicles smarter to help keep communities safer.

Want to learn how Azure can help you advance your mission?

• Contact your Microsoft representative
• Learn more about Azure

The post Smarter fire vehicles mean safer communities appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

We at Microsoft are excited to participate in the conference and demonstrate the many ways our cloud platform can help make communities safer. With its emphasis on security and its broad range of compliance certifications, Microsoft Azure Government is driving a wide array of solutions that are reducing crime. Here are a couple of examples that we and our partners will showcase at the upcoming LEIM conference:

• Community on Patrol (COP) application: Built on Microsoft Azure Government and developed together with the Miami-Dade Police Department and Zco Corporation, the COP app increases communication between citizens and police to make communities safer. Using their smartphones, citizens can report crimes—complete with video, photos, and notes—to police as they happen. They can also view maps of sex offender locations and other public safety information, and automatically notify emergency dispatchers of their exact location when placing 911 calls. In addition, public safety officials can communicate with citizens, sending emergency notifications about weather threats and other public safety concerns directly to users. Says Detective Richard Adams of the Miami-Dade County Police Department, “We believe it will bridge the gap between community and police.… [It’s] a great application that will allow our citizens and our police department and the municipalities within our county to be able to collaborate more.”

• TASER’s Evidence.com: Microsoft partner TASER International will show how it is combining its Axon and Evidence.com solution with the Microsoft Azure cloud platform and Windows 10 devices to deliver next-generation evidence management technologies and secure cloud infrastructure to law enforcement agencies across the globe. Specifically, the solution enables law enforcement officials to capture and manage video, sensor data and other evidence, and securely share it via the cloud with the right criminal justice officials as criminal cases move from the street to the courtroom. As TASER Founder and CEO Rick Smith puts it: “Microsoft Azure is well known for its industry-leading security and reliability and, with it, we can provide the most secure and compliant cloud capability to our customers.”

Since launching Microsoft Azure Government a year and a half ago, we’re continuing our commitment to make the Microsoft cloud even more secure for government. For example, Microsoft last year became the first major cloud platform contractually committed to meeting the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) security requirements for federal, state, and local governments and we now have CJIS agreements in place with 12 states. And Azure Government is excited to be one of the first service providers to participate in a Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) High Pilot to build the High Impact Baseline. We have completed the pilot process and successfully submitted for a High Impact Provisional Authority to Operate (P-ATO) for our Azure Government environment, which would allow us to work with federal agencies to host sensitive data at the high impact level. Investments such as these demonstrate our ongoing commitment to help justice and public safety customers meet the most stringent levels of security, privacy, and compliance.

To learn more about how the Microsoft cloud is transforming government, please see our interactive map showing how state and local governments across the United States are using Microsoft technology to improve their efficiency and effectiveness. Also, if you’re planning to attend the LEIM Conference, be sure to see Jeff King, principal solution architect at Microsoft, describe how the COP app is helping to create safer communities. The presentation, “Community on Patrol app: Fight Terrorism, Reduce Crime, and Improve Public Safety,” will be held from 8 to 9 AM Central Time on Wednesday, May 25.

We hope to see you there!

The post Creating safer communities through cloud technology appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Four questions every law enforcement agency needs to ask before choosing a cloud provider

From intelligent policing with the New York Police Department’s Domain Awareness System, to body camera systems across the country, to day-to-day mobile police collaboration in San Bernardino County, cloud computing is transforming the way law enforcement agencies approach their work. Yet not all cloud providers are created equal. As law enforcement agencies embrace the cloud, they need a cloud service provider they can trust.  The core of the law enforcement mission demands partners committed to meeting a full range of security and operational needs. Before entrusting your information to a cloud provider, be sure to ask the following four questions:

1. Does the cloud provider have a contractual commitment to critical compliance standards?

Microsoft takes a more rigorous approach to cloud compliance than any other enterprise cloud services provider on the market. We are the hyper-scale cloud provider that sets the standard for contractual commitments to the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) security policy requirements for federal, state, and local governments. While other cloud providers have simply stated that they’ve read and met the requirements of the CJIS security addendum, Microsoft has been continually working with federal and state regulators to address CJIS compliance, signing agreements that legally commit us to meeting these requirements.

Moreover, Microsoft complies with the requirements of the IRS 1075 Standard, used by the Internal Revenue Service to protect personal and financial information against unauthorized use, inspection, or disclosure.

Finally, Microsoft has requested a Provisional Authority to Operate certification for the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) High, which we expect to receive within the next month. As Matt Goodrich, the director of FedRAMP’s Program Management Office, put it: “Selecting Microsoft Azure Government to participate in FedRAMP’s High Impact baseline pilot and its forthcoming Provisional Authority to Operate (P-ATO) from the FedRAMP Joint Authorization Board (JAB) are testaments to Microsoft’s ability to meet the government’s rigorous security requirements.”

2. Does the cloud provider have a proven track record of delivering enterprise-level security?

Unlike other major cloud providers, all of which are relatively new to working with enterprises, Microsoft has a quarter-century track record of delivering highly secure, compliant solutions. In 1989, we launched the first Microsoft datacenter. In 1996, we opened the Microsoft Security Response Center to advance Microsoft product security. In 2002, we started the Trustworthy Computing initiative to deliver secure, private, and reliable computing And in 2005, we introduced the Microsoft Malware Protection Center to help protect and defend our customers from malware. Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit partners with law enforcement agencies around the world to stop cybercrime, protect the most vulnerable members of society, and drive a safer digital world. For more than 25 years, we’ve honed and improved our security, privacy, and compliance processes, offering law enforcement customers unparalleled expertise and commitment when it comes to delivering a highly secure cloud platform.

3. Does the cloud provider offer a comprehensive cloud platform

Competitive cloud providers may have a compelling data storage solution. Or perhaps they offer cloud-based productivity. But while they may be strong in some areas, they’re inevitably weak in others. Microsoft provides all the leading-edge capabilities that customers need. Our comprehensive cloud computing platform offers cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS), application platform as a service (PaaS), and productivity tools like Microsoft Office 365 offered as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution. The platform also includes Azure Active Directory, the identity and access management service used by the vast majority of today’s enterprises, which is built directly into our Microsoft Cloud for Government solution. With the full range of mission-critical capabilities included in our cloud platform, law enforcement agencies don’t need to piece together different solutions from multiple vendors. All the capabilities are already there, so police departments can obtain the greatest efficiencies for the least amount of work and expense.

4. Is the cloud platform specifically built to support your law enforcement mission?

Microsoft is the hyper-scale cloud provider delivering a separate cloud platform built specifically to meet the needs of law enforcement agencies and other government entities in the US. Unlike other cloud providers that provision a part of their commercial cloud for government customers, Microsoft Azure Government is a physical and logical network-isolated instance of Azure. That means our federal, state, and local government customers operate within a completely different cloud platform located in completely separate datacenters.

Microsoft goes to great lengths to protect these datacenters. All the hardware, applications, and information housed in Microsoft Azure Government datacenters remain in the continental US at all times. Likewise, the personnel who work in these datacenters are US citizens who must pass stringent security clearances that include fingerprint-based background checks. These datacenters are also located more than 500 miles apart, ensuring true geographic redundancy in the event of a natural disaster or cyberattack. All of this adds up to the highest level of security, designed to meet rigorous law enforcement demands.

By choosing a cloud service provider dedicated to their mission, law enforcement agencies can reap the full benefits of hyper scale computing, while improving the security of their data. To learn more, please see our Microsoft Azure Government Overview webpage or ask a question here. or Also visit  www.microsoft.com/lawenforcement or request a trial: Azure Government Trial, Office 365 Government Trial.

The post Hyper-scale cloud computing is a powerful tool for the law enforcement mission appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

A major reason why law enforcement agencies have been slow to move to the cloud is the need to comply with the CJIS security policy in the cloud just like they do within their own datacenters. The good news is that the Microsoft Cloud for Government breaks down this barrier. We take a rigorous approach to CJIS compliance in the cloud—much more rigorous, in fact, than any other enterprise cloud services provider on the market. Because of these commitments, law enforcement agencies at the local, state, and federal levels can now take advantage of the many benefits that the cloud provides.

Microsoft’s approach to CJIS compliance differs in three important ways from other leading cloud providers. First, Microsoft is the only major cloud platform that’s contractually committed to meeting CJIS requirements for federal, state, and local governments. While other cloud providers have simply stated that they’ve read and met the requirements of the CJIS security addendum, there’s been no third-party validation of these statements. In contrast, Microsoft has been continually working on-the-ground with federal and state regulators to address CJIS compliance, signing contractual agreements that legally commit the company to meeting these requirements.

By signing these agreements, we’re entering into dedicated, ongoing partnerships with our customers. We’re contractually committed to conduct background checks on all Microsoft employees who work in government datacenters. We’re required to provide datacenter audit information. And we’re dedicated to working together with our partners on an ongoing basis to improve law enforcement security as requirements change. In short, we’re sitting together at the same table with our customers, sharing both the risk and the responsibility.

Second, we’re the only cloud vendor to develop a completely separate cloud platform dedicated to our US federal, state, and local government clients. Unlike other cloud providers that rope off a corner of their commercial cloud platform and declare it their government cloud, Microsoft delivers completely separate datacenters that aren’t in any way connected to our commercial datacenters. Government information is kept only within these separate datacenters, which are built with the most stringent security controls that meet the CJIS security policy and other government security requirements. By developing a separate government cloud, we’ve provided an important layer of protection for law enforcement agencies.

Another way in which our approach differs from our competitors is that Microsoft is transparent about how it’s meeting CJIS security policy requirements. At Microsoft, we openly share our security strategy so that government leaders and security experts can evaluate the strength of our commitments. This isn’t the case with some of the other cloud providers on the market. For example, Amazon requires customers to sign a non-disclosure agreement to start a CJIS compliance discussion. This doesn’t do much to increase government confidence in the cloud. We believe security commitments should be transparent.

Law enforcement agencies recognize Microsoft’s commitment to security, and they’ve been responding. Roughly 3 million entities now use the Microsoft Cloud for Government, many of which are law enforcement agencies. Moreover, third-party vendors—from VIEVU to NC4 to PublicEye—have been building new solutions on the Microsoft Azure government platform in large part because of our industry-leading commitment to security.

At Microsoft, we understand that compliance with the CJIS security policy is a crucial priority for law enforcement agencies across the US. It’s not just a check box, but an ongoing commitment—one that we take very seriously.

To learn more, please visit the Microsoft in Government website.

The post The Microsoft approach to CJIS compliance appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

This kind of information sharing is important in other areas of public safety as well. As an active-duty firefighter in suburban Chicago for the past 10 years, I’ve seen first-hand the importance of getting the right information into the hands of public safety officials. Whether it’s a fire department responding to a house fire or a police department handling an incident, timely information is the most valuable tool for addressing an emergency, protecting life and property, and ensuring transparency in the response.

It’s exciting to see law enforcement agencies and the broader public safety community tapping into the cloud in ways previously not possible before Microsoft Azure Government became the only cloud platform with a contractual commitment to uphold the FBI’s rigorous Criminal Justice Information Services Security Policy. State and local governments must comply with these requirements in order to obtain FBI data. Azure Government’s contractual support for the FBI’s Security Policy reflects Microsoft’s commitment to helping government customers leverage the cloud while staying compliant with critical public sector security, privacy and compliance requirements.

Just last month, Microsoft contractually committed with the California Department of Justice that Azure Government would support the CJIS Security Policy. California now joins the states of Texas, Michigan and Kansas with signed CJIS agreements with Microsoft to support Azure Government for law enforcement agencies in their states. One factor that’s important to these states and their law enforcement agencies is that Microsoft contractually commits to the same security standards that the FBI imposes on agencies. This deep commitment to meeting rigorous compliance requirements and government policies sets Microsoft apart from other cloud services providers.

Whether I’m responding to a fire in my community or working with state and local government customers to deploy innovative Microsoft CityNext solutions, it’s gratifying to finally see the U.S. public safety community use the power of the cloud – and even more satisfying to know that Microsoft is leading the way with the most comprehensive cloud platform for government.

Have a comment or opinion on this post? Let us know @Microsoft_Gov. Or email us at ongovernment@microsoft.com, You can also follow Microsoft CityNext on Twitter @MSFTCityNext.

Rick Zak
Director, Justice & Public Safety Solutions, Microsoft Corporation

The post Using the power of the cloud for public safety appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.