New Jersey’s IT upgrades ‘building in security’ from the start
New Jersey Chief Technology Officer Chris Rein said that building in security and risk management from the beginning has been key for the state’s ongoing IT modernization projects.
Rein told StateScoop that several agencies are modernizing the tech behind their business processes, to reduce risk, adapt to current needs and comply with changing legislation. Some of the agencies partaking in system modernizations include the state’s Department of Labor, the Department of Motor Vehicles and New Jersey Department of Pensions and Benefits.
“Some of the systems are as much as 42 years old, 37 years old, and so forth,” he said. “Many of them had been written locally by the state, so that puts all of the risk on maintaining those especially with older languages. We’re talking about NATURAL and COBOL and database platforms that are no longer industry supported.”
He added that the state is focusing more on “configuration rather than individual rip-it-apart customization.”
Rein also said the state is also updating a financial system used by many agencies. Across all of these efforts, he said, security is a primary concern. He said the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness helps conduct security and risk reviews for every technology and contract the state considers adopting.
“Our security reviews are essential, and they’re the one of the real common business processes that we place on evaluating our vendors, our vendors security models, the protection of data, and not only from a privacy perspective, but from a data loss perspective, whether this is a cloud solution or a couple of them are on prem solutions,” Rein said. “We’re focusing on building in security from the beginning and not adding it on as an added measure at the end, so that’s been a common theme across these modernizations.”
