State of Washington Selects Secure Digital Archiving System

The State of Washington selected a solution to ensure both internal and external security for the new digital archiving system to be used at the Washington State Digital Archives.

The system, which is being implemented at the state's new archive management center in Cheney, Wash., uses the SSH Tectia client/server solution and SSH Tectia Manager to protect tens of thousands of state and local documents of multiple formats being accessed by remote locations throughout the state -- information that previously could only be found in its original form or on microfiche. The Digital Archiving system also will help preserve the state's history while simplifying citizen transactions with state government.

The digital archiving system will ensure the authenticity of the record and protect the chain of custody by transmitting these documents using the SFTP (secure file transfer protocol) in SSH Tectia and x.509 digital certificates. This will enable state agencies to send and retrieve records such as birth and death certificates, state drivers' and other state documents in digital format, dramatically decreasing the time of request to delivery and increasing the efficiency of state employees using this system.

"Preserving and making valuable electronic public records more readily available has been a difficult and elusive service that the State of Washington must offer," said Adam Jansen, Digital Archivist for the State of Washington. "With limited resources and tight state budgets, the challenge was how to send, retrieve and store millions of documents in an efficient manner while maintaining the authenticity of the records and guaranteeing the chain of custody. SSH Tectia was the only solution out of many that we extensively tested that provided everything we needed. SSH Tectia supported a wide variety of platforms, automated scripting and strong encryption and authentication ensuring the secure transmission of these critical documents."