How Marietta, GA, made CJIS compliance work in the real world

Marietta, GA, shows that CJIS compliance can be more than a checkbox. Learn how the city improved usability and efficiency through smarter, compliant access management.

Achieving compliance with the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Security Policy 6.0 is a major milestone. But for many agencies, the bigger question comes next: how do you sustain compliance while making access easier for your people?

Meeting the letter of the policy is important, but lasting success depends on giving officers and staff tools they can actually use every day.

The City of Marietta, Georgia, offers a real-world example of what this looks like in practice. By choosing an access management solution that balanced security with usability, the city not only maintained CJIS compliance but also improved workflows across departments.

Moving beyond compliance requirements

Marietta's police department had already met the FBI's mandate for advanced authentication when accessing national crime databases from patrol cars using Imprivata Enterprise Access Management (EAM). But compliance alone wasn't enough. Officers needed to log in quickly, stay productive, and avoid unnecessary disruptions.

City leaders recognized that the same solution could also make daily work smoother for law enforcement and municipal staff alike.

Why they chose Imprivata Enterprise Access Management

Along with facilitating CJIS compliance, Marietta selected Imprivata Enterprise Access Management (EAM) because it delivered strong security without added complexity. Multifactor authentication was built in but paired with single sign-on (SSO) to minimize repetitive logins. Officers could use their badges or fingerprints to transition between applications seamlessly.

This balance between compliance and usability made EAM an attractive option for more than just the police department. The city soon expanded deployment to fire, courts, utilities, and other departments.

Results that go beyond compliance

For Marietta, the shift to EAM produced benefits that any agency striving for easier access will recognize:

• Productivity gains: Officers and staff spent less time typing credentials and more time focused on their work.
• Employee adoption: Workers embraced the system and even requested that more applications be added to the SSO environment.
• Centralized management: IT gained stronger control over authentication policies while reducing password-related help desk calls.
• Scalable improvement: What began as a police compliance project became a citywide platform for secure, user-friendly access.

Lessons for agencies that are already compliant

Marietta's story highlights an important truth: compliance is only the starting point. Agencies that invest in solutions designed with usability in mind can turn security mandates into opportunities for efficiency.

For agencies that have already achieved CJIS 6.0 compliance, the next step is to ask: how easy is it for people to use the systems we've put in place? If the answer is "not very," then it may be time to follow Marietta's example and choose access management that makes security seamless. And for those still working toward implementing required mandates: you may want to consider how sustainable your solution or method is and what longer term gains you expect to see out of it.

Ready to go deeper? Download Imprivata's full white paper, CJIS 6.0 compliance made practical, to explore strategies that combine strong security with simpler access.

Download the full white paper.