Secure trust is important and valued, especially when your organization is employing resources from another company to handle sensitive data and modernize internal IT processes. Recently, Mainline was involved in a Mainline Managed Services (MS) engagement that involved this very situation. One of the main requirements to success of the engagement was ensuring Mainlines MS employees had secure access to an external clients’ systems, on a daily basis.
The Mainline MS team had to agree to go through intense background checks, including fingerprinting checks on a state level and FBI security checks on a National Level, in order to perform the services for our client. We were asked to comply with the stringent Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) security policies, which integrate presidential and FBI directives, federal laws and the criminal justice community’s Advisory Policy Board decisions. The security policy defines 13 areas that private contractors, such as service providers, must evaluate to determine if services can be used consistent with CJIS requirements.
The Mainline MS team coordinated these checks with the client, state and national resources to ensure appropriate access to the IT environment was secured. Ultimately, the process led to approval of access, which has enabled the team unprecedented access to our client’s environment, allowing our team to create a unique MS solution targeted to the specific client goals for the client. Although the process was time-consuming and somewhat intense, overall it was a positive experience and led to greater understanding of CJIS and our customers’ needs.