News

posted on 18 March 2008 09:42

The Division of Child Support (DCS) in the State of Washington is issuing 200 secured SanDisk Cruzer Enterprise flash drives to its staff.

The drives encrypt their data contents, with 256-bit AES encryption, and require password access. If access attempts fail after a 10-try limit the drive's contents are deleted.

DCS, part of the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, gathers highly confidential information - including Internal Revenue Service tax returns, employer records, criminal histories and even U.S. State Department passport data - in pursuing its collection efforts.

The agency administers state and federal child support laws, including the collection of child-support payments from non-custodial parents. DCS manages about 350,000 active child-support cases and collects about $700 million per year in child-support payments.

Staff have been using privately-purchased flash drives to carry agency presentations, screenshots and other material. As such drives can be easily lost or stolen and may contain sensitive information the agency has decided to switch its staff over to the secure drives.

The secure flash drives are being provided to unit supervisors, who manage collection teams in DCS field offices. The master Central Management & Control server software console for provisioning and managing the drives will be at DCS headquarters in Olympia, Wash., with sub-administrators in each DCS field office.

^{[Paul, Roberts, news editor.]}