Town manager highlights emergency preparedness and IT work; cites large volume of cyber events

At the Sept. 9 meeting Town Manager Patrick Banger reviewed department highlights including Emergency Preparedness Month and information technology operations, noting the town’s dependence on IT for public safety and service delivery and the scale of monitoring the town performs to detect security events.

Banger listed key functions of the Emergency Management Division and said the town continues to develop resilience and response coordination. He also highlighted the IT department’s metrics: about 12,000 support tickets resolved, more than 130 network switches and routers, over 200 servers supporting some 200 applications, and hundreds of public safety devices. The town’s GIS contains millions of mapped features across land development, water, streets, sewer and stormwater layers.

When discussing information security, Banger reported a recent total of roughly 43.1 billion monitored events and said that number represented activity from June through August; he noted much of the traffic is automated but that more sophisticated, targeted attacks have increased and require constant attention. “A lot of that is automated and kind of low level. But more and more, we’re seeing very sophisticated attacks that are directed specifically at your systems,” he said.

Banger also summarized recent modernization work: cloud migrations and application upgrades for police and fire, AV modernization for meeting and emergency spaces, and pilots with emerging technology offices, including some AI proofs of concept. He closed by noting department contributions to public dashboards and by recognizing a staff member for an upcoming personal event.

Discussion vs. decision: this was a departmental report; council received the information and no decisions or votes were recorded on IT or emergency management initiatives during the meeting.