Since Bridge4PS is not a system that “queries CJI”, it is not subject to CJIS regulations. While that’s been confirmed with the FBI CJIS office, it’s still subject to each state’s CJIS auditor and/or department policies. Bridge4PS meets the majority of CJIS requirements, but not all are feasible given the nature of Bridge4PS as a real-time collaboration platform versus a criminal justice database.
We are currently operating under a grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security pursuing FedRAMP Moderate compliance. The monitoring, logging, incident reporting and auditing requirements for FedRAMP exceed the CJIS requirements in these areas except that we do not have a way of categorizing CJI from other data since the system is not based on a structured data model. The other significant requirement that we do not meet is session timeout as that would render the platform ineffective for real-time collaboration as users would not receive notifications when logged out.
The question used to come up frequently, but as the dialogue has evolved with cybersecurity officers and/or CJIS auditors, they have confirmed that it is not applicable. No department has asked to execute a security addendum. There are departments who permit transmission of CJI. We are unaware of any that explicitly prohibit it. Since there are thousands of users from hundreds of departments across the country using Bridge4PS, we do not know the policies and procedures for all deployments. Per the terms of our End User License Agreement and Privacy Policy, it is the responsibility of the user to be compliant with their individual regulatory guidelines for content and retention.
Some states and departments have formally adopted Bridge4PS, while others use it more informally to replace consumer-grade messaging apps. For example, the State of South Dakota put out a procurement for a statewide interoperability app. They selected Bridge4PS and had their cybersecurity office conduct a security assessment prior to purchasing Enterprise Bridge4PS Licenses. There is substantial adoption of Bridge4PS in Minnesota with the Human Trafficking task force and multiple specialized divisions operating under the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) in conjunction with numerous local, federal and tribal partners. MNJIS has formally approved the sharing of PII in Bridge4PS channels.
The table on page 2 shows the Bridge4PS status for each CJIS requirement.
Please contact us through our help center at https://help.bridge4ps.com if you have any questions.