The Police Digital Service (PDS) and Amazon Web Services have set up dedicated platform of cloud based technologies for police forces.
Named the Police Assured Landing Zone (PALZ), it provides a suite of tools to support the implementation of cloud technology for use with police ICT systems.
PDS said this marks a move away from relying on locally hosted infrastructure assured through policing governance bodies such as the National Police Chief’s Council (NPCC) and National Police Technology Council, although it has been designed to align with the NPCC’s information security principles and the ‘security by design’ approach.
It said the PALZ automatically implements a secure configuration to enable police forces to quickly start their migration to the cloud.
Law enforcement organisations are able to manage their landing zone, adapting and adding capabilities as their requirements develop, and have more time to work on solutions that deliver value to their operations and IT infrastructure.
Best practice and principles
The platform is set up to support the establishment of best practice for cloud solutions, preventative, architectural and detective controls, said PDS. These controls are documented against national principles and standards to help forces with assurance for their workloads.
For example, police forces can use the PALZ mapping document to mitigate risks identified during data protection impact assessments and other assurance reviews.
A suite of resources and training materials, available on the PDS Knowledge Hub, has been developed to support onboarding to the platform.
In announcing the launch, PDS said it is “starting to engage across the sector to look at cloud based solutions for policing. The service aims to maximise the benefits of this technology, whilst reducing potential risks.”
