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CISO tells committee municipal IT 'backbone' as cybersecurity incidents rise; penetration testing expanded
Summary
The committee heard the borough CISO's annual report outlining completed infrastructure upgrades, a three-tier backup plan, expanded two-factor authentication and results from penetration testing, plus incident totals for the prior year.
West Chester — Bill, the borough's CISO, presented the annual IT and cybersecurity report to the Administration, Communication, and Technology Committee on Feb. 11, saying the department has completed multiple infrastructure upgrades and continues to expand cybersecurity protections.
"The IT, I do believe, is the backbone," Bill said, summarizing the department's role across municipal services and noting the growing costs of cybersecurity since 2020.
The nut graf: the CISO laid out recent capital and security work to reduce risk to borough systems and services, including network switch and access-point upgrades, expanded two-factor authentication and routine penetration testing, and provided incident totals that show active defense work by staff.
Bill told the committee the IT department completed upgrades to roughly 24–26 network switches over an 18-month period, upgraded access points across the municipal building, public works and two wastewater plants, and finished an expansion of Duo two-factor authentication that now covers local authentication including the police department. He said the borough began formal penetration testing last year, described the first test as successful, and said two additional tests are planned for the coming year.
The report also documented incident-volume metrics: 1,020 automated cybersecurity threats were flagged and blocked by systems; staff reported about 710 suspicious-message incidents that required review; there were two account-takeover attempts last year that were unsuccessful. Bill said help-desk work amounted to roughly 776 tickets for the year (about 64 per month) and that the ticket count likely captures about 70% of total requests because some are reported informally.
On data protection, the borough now maintains a three-tier backup approach: on-premises backups, cloud backups, and a cloud-to-cloud Barracuda service. Bill described cybersecurity awareness as an ongoing daily program for staff, citing the newsletter, daily videos and annual Cybersecurity Awareness Month activities that culminated with a staff training in November. He said the IT budget finished the year with about an $18,000 surplus.
Committee chair Brian Travis asked about website work and building-and-housing content; Bill said some departmental website refresh work is in progress but that building and housing has not completed its content updates.
The CISO closed by inviting questions; committee members did not move any formal motion related to the report at the meeting but asked staff to coordinate remaining website and data steps with affected departments.
