FBI Puts Cloud Providers on Notice Over Security Rules

The FBI is taking a tough line on cloud vendors looking to do business with U.S. law enforcement agencies, saying Tuesday that there would be no compromise in its new rule that all such services comply with the agency’s Criminal Justice Information Systems (CJIS) security requirements. The FBI knows some vendors may have a tough time meeting those requirements, but it says that’s the price of doing business with federal law enforcement.

“The FBI remains committed to using technology in its information-sharing processes, but not at the sacrifice of the security of the information with which it has been entrusted,” Stephen Fischer Jr., a spokesman for the FBI’s CJIS division, said on Tuesday in an e-mail to Computerworld.

The move follows the Los Angeles Police Department dropping Google Apps two months ago because it could not comply with the CJIS requirements.

The LAPD and the city attorney’s office ultimately decided, some two years after deciding to move their e-mail systems to the cloud in order to save costs, that no cloud computing solution is really compatible with the federal security guidelines that the departments are required to follow, Cloudline’s Jon Stokes wrote at the time.

Wired has the story HERE!