Office 365 gets the green light in California for use by law enforcement

A critical milestone was reached this month in the State of California with the Department of Justice and Microsoft jointly signing an agreement confirming that Office 365 helps organizations meet strict federal regulatory requirements around security and privacy.

What this means is that any California state Office 365 customer can now have its law enforcement agencies use Office 365 as the cloud productivity, communication and collaboration solution and still comply with the FBI Criminal Justice Information Security Policy requirements.

“Just like we did with Texas, we worked closely with California officials to ensure that Microsoft offerings could meet the high demands of CJIS,” writes Mike Donlan, vice president of U.S. State and Local Government at Microsoft, in a post over on the Microsoft in Government Blog.

The agreement comes at a time when more and more state and local governments are shifting more applications to the cloud, especially in California where cities from San Diego to Oakland and counties like Santa Clara and San Mateo are moving their productivity workloads to the cloud with Microsoft, with more on the way. On Tuesday, the City of Long Beach City Council voted to go with Office 365, noting that Microsoft meets unique public safety requirements.

“The move to the cloud also enables more collaboration and ensures workloads can be accessed from anywhere, at any time, and from any device,” Donlan writes.

For the whole story, head on over to the Microsoft in Government Blog.

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Posted by Jeff Meisner
Editor, The Official Microsoft Blog