As the California Department of Technology’s 2018 annual report – California Information Technology Annual Report 2018 – points out, one of the many things CDT does well is stiff-arm cyber thieves before they make off with the state’s sensitive information. Protecting California’s information assets is tantamount to standing guard over the gold reserves at Fort Knox, and we take it just as seriously.
Under the watchful eye of our State Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), California’s gold mine of information is kept under a series of continuously evolving digital locks and keys to combat information thieves’ innovative and deceptive ways of wreaking havoc on government and commercial information infrastructures. These crooks have a simple goal: Steal as much sensitive information as possible. This game of cat and mouse keeps CDT on its toes.
As detailed in our Annual Report, CDT has instituted cybersecurity policies and developed solutions to keep thieves at bay. Some of the measures include:
- Expanding secure cloud service offerings that not only reduce computing cost and system maintenance, but bolster the cybersecurity management environment through risk management services that meet the stringent security requirements of the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP).
- Strengthening the integrity of government email security by migrating emails from 76 state entities – nearly 200 thousand individual mailboxes – off premises to Microsoft’s Office 365 Exchange Online Protection solution in California’s government cloud. This consolidation meets FedRAMP security standards.
- Partnering with the Employment Development Department (EDD) to protect the sensitive information of nearly 2 million customers through a new ‘Benefit Programs Online’ portal that provides the convenience of a single sign on to access EDD’s mission-critical benefit systems.
- Transitioning the California Correctional Health Care Services (CCHCS) from an ineffectual, paper-based system that required physical security to a fully integrated electronic system for all of its 35 participating California locations. Under the new system, clinically relevant patient documentation resides in a single, secure patient record.
The Herculean efforts CDT undertakes is just a part of our overall work. To learn more about how we thwart the best efforts of cyber criminals – as well as how we improve IT throughout the state – we invite you to read our Annual Report. It’s loaded with facts, figures and some really great projects.