DuPage committee approves ThinkGuard backup contract after questions on scope and cost

The DuPage County Judicial and Public Safety Committee voted to approve a contract purchase order with ThinkGuard to provide backup and recovery services for the sheriff's office, covering the period from June 10, 2025, through Nov. 30, 2027, for a total not to exceed $368,853.50.

The approval followed questions from Member Yu about the contract's high price tag and whether the county was consolidating multiple backup vendors. “I actually do have several questions about this just because I think this is a high price tag,” said Member Yu. Yu asked how many backup servers the sheriff's office currently uses, what systems would be backed up, and whether the county was consolidating backup server systems.

Jason Snow, sheriff's office IT staff, told the committee the existing solution was mainly an in‑house snapshot system monitored by the sheriff's office and that the ThinkGuard service would provide 24/7 monitoring and offsite cloud storage. “The current backup solution we have was kinda in house, and it was monitoring by us at the sheriff's office,” Snow said. He said ThinkGuard would monitor backups 24/7/365, store data on secure data sites with East and West Coast locations and provide up to one year of restore capability from the start date.

Committee members also asked about procurement. Yu asked whether the award had gone through an RFP and whether procurement had been consulted. The sheriff's office representative said the contract was being procured through the TIPS joint purchasing cooperative: “This is on that TIPS contract, which is a joint purchasing agreement. So this is that best price,” a county procurement representative said.

Member Zay praised the speed of the procurement after the sheriff's office experienced a recent incident that prompted the need for more robust backups: “After what happened, I appreciate the speed at what the sheriff's office got this up and going so they know this won't happen again.” Zay also noted the vendor is a TIPS contract vendor and described it as a disadvantaged minority‑ and woman‑owned enterprise.

Committee members asked for and received clarification that the contract provides longer‑term retention and capability for Office 365 clients (OneDrive, SharePoint) that the county previously lacked. Snow explained the county's internal snapshot system stored only a few weeks of backups and lacked long‑term retention and dedicated Office 365 backup resources. “We only can store a few weeks of backups for in that system. This is more long term,” Snow said.

The committee approved the purchase order after discussion. No recorded roll‑call vote totals were provided in the committee transcript; the clerk announced the motion carried after members were asked if any opposed.

The contract award follows an acknowledged county cybersecurity incident that prompted requests for additional off‑site and monitored backups. Committee discussion focused on the contract term, restore‑window capabilities, procurement pathway and whether this purchase would replace or supplement other backup arrangements.