Wayne County approves data-center lease extension and records emergency cybersecurity procurements

Wayne County's Government Operations Committee on a voice vote approved a lease modification to continue county equipment at the Wayne County Data Center, approved an amendment to an incident-response subscription contract, and received an emergency procurement report for an earlier Dell contract tied to a county cyber incident.

The committee voted to approve "modification 7 to a semi year lease and license agreement with NTT Managed Services Americas LLC, DBA Secure 24 LLC to continue leasing space for the Wayne County Data Center," and to approve "Amendment 1 to a 3 year contract with 2 1 year options to renew with Trace3 LLC for Cisco Talos incident response subscription services." The committee also received on file an emergency procurement report for a contract with Dell Marketing for "60 contiguous business hours of incident response and recovery services."

Hector Roman, the county's director of information technology, described the Dell work as part of the county's recovery from a prior cyber incident. "This was emergency services that were procured back in October of 20 20. Due to our cyber incident, we we engaged in, Dell response team to help us with mediation recovery efforts, and they did a great job assisting us through our, through our recovery phase," Roman said. He further said Trace3 had been on retainer and "within, I think, was it 20 minutes when we called them that morning, they had a team assigned to us and walked us through, the entire steps."

Commission counsel explained the county's procurement standard for emergencies. "Under the procurement ordinance, the administration is allowed to, enter into a contract on an emergency basis for health, safety, and welfare reasons ..." counsel said, adding that the ordinance requires administrators to submit the emergency procurement rationale to the committee "within 60 days after they've actually initiated it." When asked whether the county had submitted that paperwork, counsel said, "To my understanding, yes."

The committee moved and approved a single motion to receive file number 8 (the emergency procurement report) and to approve items 2 and 7. Commissioner Killeen made the motion; Commissioner Wilson seconded. The chair announced, "Motion carried." The vote was taken on committee tablets; no roll-call tally was recorded in the public transcript.

Why it matters: the lease extension keeps county systems housed at the current data center facility, while the Trace3 and Dell contracts are tied to incident response and recovery work the county said it has used following a documented cyber incident. The committee briefed itself on the procurement authority that allows the county to contract in emergencies and confirmed (per counsel) that the required submission was filed after the emergency procurement was initiated.

The committee record does not include a dollar amount for the lease modification or the Trace3 amendment; the emergency procurement report states Dell work was procured in October 2020 and covered 60 contiguous business hours of incident response and recovery.

What's next: the approvals allow the county to continue the contracted services and the data center lease; further contract details, costs, or terms beyond the duration and renewal options were not provided in the committee discussion on this item.