The deal, announced Friday, June 17, will allow the state’s law enforcement agencies to leverage the cloud technology. Public safety agencies have traditionally been a roadblock to wide cloud procurements due to their stringent security requirements.
The arrangement complies with the requirements, regulations and laws outlined in the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Security Policy, which the agency said in 2012 all cloud products sold to public safety agencies must follow.
Colorado joins the California Department of Justice and the state of Minnesota, which both recently signed their own CJIS service agreements with AWS.
“We recognize that when law enforcement agencies place data in the cloud, they put an absolute priority on secure access to information, wherever and whenever it is needed. To meet these needs, the AWS Cloud infrastructure has been architected to be the most secure, reliable and flexible cloud computing environment in the world,” Teresa Carlson, vice president of AWS Worldwide Public Sector, said in a statement.
Because of the increasing amount of data being produced in the law enforcement arena through the use of technologies like body-worn cameras and digital evidence management tools, cloud services can present a more cost-effective way of managing data.
Government Technology recently reported that more agencies are moving toward cloud solutions for the added benefits, past the storage of data. Tools like data analytics and the ability to share across the considerable silos of the older systems have piqued the interest of agencies worldwide.
According to the company, more than 2,000 government agencies are using AWS.
