A couple years ago I wrote about how I thought attitudes concerning storing critical enterprise data in “The Cloud” would have evolved five years hence. Bottom line: The prediction was that by 2019, best practices will require that information of any criticality, confidentiality, or sensitivity be stored in The Cloud, because that will be far and away the most safe and manageable place for it.
Thus at the Justice Summit in Grand Rapids this June it warmed the cockles of my heart to hear Scott Bade, President of ImageSoft, who noted that the new generation of Justice System Information Management Systems are being designed for Cloud storage, for exactly those reasons. To a room of generally skeptical judges, court managers, and court technologists, Scott acknowledged the current general negative impressions regarding the security of data in The Cloud. Confronting their skepticism head-on, he then predicted that they would soon come to understand that the very reason for moving their most sensitive data to The Cloud is that it is no longer safe anywhere else.
As Scott pointed out, courts and other justice agencies can and will continue to store data “on-site” (wherever THAT is) for as long as they wish. The larger point is that, because Cloud storage will almost certainly become the rule rather than the exception, the new Justice System Information Systems are being designed to take advantage of the opportunities such architectures provide. And those opportunities are exciting indeed, offering greater functionality and flexibility, lower total cost of ownership, and far greater management control to far finer levels of granularity (like individual litigants on their own cases).
The Justice Community doesn’t need to lead the way. Granted, justice system information includes highly sensitive and confidential material. But so, then, do National Security information systems. And here, the Defense Department has been moving aggressively to transition to storing information in The Cloud.
For those who are interested (ATTENTION, GEEKS!), Department of Defense Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide, Version 1, Release 2, 18 March, 2016 makes fascinatingly turgid reading. For the rest of us, the mere existence of such a document should send a powerful message. Meet some folks who are seriously interested in security, who are spelling out in excruciating detail how to store and access its most sensitive information (designated “Level 6”, for anyone who wants to know).
Just for fun, here is a chart from the Guide. Imagine how easily it could be applied to Justice System Information.
From Section 3.2, Information Impact Levels
Figure 1 provides a summary of the current information impact levels coupled with some of the distinguishing requirements and characteristics.
Note that per Section 5.2.1, the information must be physically located in the US or an area under US jurisdiction (like, say , Guantanamo). Not unreasonable; and courts may very well apply in-state restrictions if they please.
All of this is to say to the justice community that 1) Cloud-based information storage is in your future, probably sooner than you expect; 2) Properly implemented, it will be far more secure than any other form of storage; and 3) The tools that bring it to you bring also some very, very exciting capabilities to improve justice community delivery of services.