Fort Scott arranges interim IT assessment with Stronghold, plans RFP for long-term services

FORT SCOTT, Kan. — Fort Scott city officials on July 2 moved to secure interim IT support and an immediate assessment after the city learned the two people who had administrator access to the city’s systems were no longer employed by the county and the city lacked an off-boarding or fallback plan.

City Manager Brad said the personnel "who had access to all of our systems and networks were suddenly no longer employed, either with county or with us," and that the city did not have an off-boarding process for system administrators. "As far as ... business continuity plan, we're kinda well, we don't have one," he said.

That prompted the city manager to sign an agreement for Stronghold, the vendor currently working with Bourbon County, to perform a network discovery and security assessment for the city and to provide interim IT support while the city develops a longer-term procurement plan. Avion, Stronghold’s chief technical officer, described Stronghold’s approach as 24/7 support with monthly reports and strategic reviews and said the company backs up systems every four hours to both an on-site appliance and…