DIY vs. Outsourcing—Which CJIS Compliance Approach Is Right for Your Municipality?

When your team is lean and understaffed, with limited budget, you get used to doing things on your own. You make it happen. It’s part of your job.

But sometimes the burden, as with CJIS, can get more overwhelming with each passing year as your municipality grows, requirements become more complex, and audit bureaucracy increases.

As you know, CJIS compliance is more than just ticking things off a list. Success means safeguarding sensitive Criminal Justice Information (CJI) data and reassuring the public that you are meeting the high standards set by the FBI.

With the stakes so high and the path to compliance so daunting, it’s an important time to examine if you need a different approach to CJIS compliance other than bootstrapping. Is tackling CJIS compliance in house the right approach, or is CJIS Compliance as a Service (CaaS) a better option?

The DIY Approach: Control Comes with Cost and Complexity

When you go it alone, you rely on internal resources, manual processes, and spreadsheets. While it may (barely) get you through CJIS audits, a DIY approach comes with significant challenges.

Cost

A DIY approach requires ongoing investments in technology and staff training along with sucking up a lot of your time to document compliance, create and update policies, and monitor for compliance gaps. Plus, unexpected expenses often arise after audits when you must remediate gaps or when you must reactively upgrade technology and tools when CJIS requirements change (such as with the MFA mandate in October 2024).

Staffing

With a small IT team, it’s difficult to find someone with specialized CJIS expertise who can stay on top of meeting requirements and ensure compliance. You’ll try, but your team is stretched in a zillion different directions. CJIS compliance becomes another fire—and you will only react to the most urgent aspects such as an audit or severe lapse in meeting controls.

Auditing

Auditing success depends on rigorous internal processes that are continuously monitored and maintained. Is that happening for you? If not, you’re not alone. The auditing process can weigh you down as you compile information, put controls in place, create formalized policies and procedures, and track evidence. You know what you need to do—you just can’t get to it effectively and you often don’t have the right tools. With such an arduous and intense process, you risk outdated documentation and procedures, making audits stressful.

Incident Response

As one of the 13 control families, incident response is a critical part of CJIS requirements. You must document response procedures, designate roles amongst your municipal staff, and ensure that you have an actionable game plan for an incident. It’s likely you’ve got an incident response plan, but we’ve seen that many of these plans are incomplete, outdated, and/or untested. It’s understandable if you don’t have the time or resources to build and maintain a formalized playbook. You may also lack the right 24/7 monitoring tools, reporting documentation, and training.

Scalability

If your municipality grows, that means more public safety staff and systems, which means more workload for your IT team. But it’s likely your team will not grow, meaning you’re doing more CJIS compliance work with the same people. It’s like adding to a house of cards—more systems, more body cameras, more records management tools, and more cloud services lead to more documentation and policies in relation to audits. How much more can you take on before you’re unable to deliver?

Technology

Doing CJIS compliance yourself increases the risk of falling behind on the latest requirements. Whether it’s cloud storage, mobile devices, or body cameras, you’re having to research, vet, and configure these technologies yourself. When stressed for time and bandwidth, this can lead to gaps. Your stack of security tools may also be siloed and limited, your updates and patch cycles inconsistent and delayed, and monitoring tools basic, manual, or absent.

Policies

You must develop and maintain policies internally, which requires frequent review. It’s tempting to use generic policy templates, but they may not align with CJIS requirements. Even if your policies meet CJIS today, they often go untouched after they are written. When CJIS requirements change, your policies are out of date. In recent years, over half of CJIS audit findings nationwide have been administrative, not technical—meaning policy gaps, training lapses, and incomplete documentation trip up more departments than firewalls or encryption.

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If any of the above areas suffer, the risk of noncompliance rises. That’s why CJIS CaaS may serve as a great option to help your team.

CJIS Compliance as a Service (CaaS): A Structured, Scalable Alternative

For municipalities facing mounting CJIS compliance demands, CJIS Compliance as a Service (CaaS) offers a structured alternative versus the DIY approach. Rather than replacing your team’s involvement, CaaS augments your capabilities with specialized tools, expertise, and ongoing support designed to reduce risk and improve efficiency.

Cost Management

Unlike your unpredictable CJIS compliance costs where audits, staffing gaps, and reactive upgrades can strain budgets, CaaS typically operates on a subscription model. This allows for more predictable budgeting and reduces the likelihood of surprise expenses tied to compliance remediation or technology refreshes. While not free of cost, CaaS shifts spending from reactive to proactive, helping you plan ahead.

Staffing Support

CaaS doesn’t eliminate the need for internal ownership at your municipality, but it does reduce the burden on your IT team. External experts provide guidance on CJIS controls, policies, and audit preparation. This helps you avoid the pitfalls of relying on limited in-house CJIS expertise, especially when your staff wear many hats.

Audit Readiness

One of the most tangible benefits of CaaS is its impact on audit preparation. Instead of scrambling to compile documentation and evidence, municipalities using CaaS maintain a continuous audit-ready posture. Centralized dashboards track compliance status, flag gaps, and store evidence in a format that aligns with CJIS audit expectations. This reduces the stress and time commitment associated with audit cycles.

Incident Response

CaaS providers typically offer standardized incident response frameworks that align with CJIS requirements. These frameworks include documented procedures, role assignments, and escalation paths. While municipalities still need to engage in incident response, having a vetted playbook and access to 24/7 monitoring tools can significantly improve response times and reduce exposure.

Scalability

As municipalities grow, so do their compliance obligations. CaaS platforms are designed to scale with your size, accommodating new systems, users, and data sources without requiring proportional increases in internal staffing. This makes it easier to maintain compliance as complexity increases.

Technology Alignment

CJIS requirements evolve alongside technology. CaaS platforms help municipalities stay current by integrating logs and data from automated compliance checks, patch management, and monitoring tools into a centralized platform that helps facilitate compliance. This reduces the risk of falling behind on requirements like MFA, encryption, or endpoint protection—areas where DIY approaches often struggle due to resource constraints.

Policy Management

Rather than relying on generic templates or outdated internal documents, CaaS includes policy development and maintenance as part of the service. Policies are reviewed and updated regularly to reflect CJIS changes, and they’re integrated into broader Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) frameworks. This helps municipalities avoid administrative audit findings, which are increasingly common.

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Ongoing oversight and a dedicated focus on CJIS requirements lower your risk of non-compliance. The tools, monitoring, and human expertise that CJIS CaaS provides eliminates most of the pain points related to going it alone.

Making the Transition

Moving from a manual, DIY approach to an automated, centralized, and continuously monitored CJIS auditing platform can transform your compliance strategy. You’ll gain peace of mind, reduce unexpected costs, and ensure your municipality is always ready for audits.

Need help making the transition? Reach out to ThinkGard today to learn how CJIS Compliance as a Service can work for you.