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County IT contractor recommends endpoint detection and response; quotes roughly $4 per device per month
Summary
Erickson Solutions Group recommended adding endpoint detection and response (EDR) on county systems to detect and isolate malicious behavior; the vendor said the tool costs about $4 per endpoint per month and that cyber insurance and recent incidents make EDR increasingly standard.
Jeff Erickson, of Erickson Solutions Group, recommended the Clay County IT environment add an endpoint detection and response (EDR) layer that detects suspicious behavior on individual computers, gathers logs, and can take automated actions to isolate threats.
Erickson explained the difference between traditional antivirus and EDR: antivirus typically scans files at download or execution, while EDR monitors runtime behavior and can stop processes that exhibit malicious actions. "It picks up the behavior rather than just something that has happened," Erickson said, and it can "automatically prevent it from doing something malicious."
Cost and deployment
Erickson told commissioners the typical cost is about $4 per system per month. Using the county's approximate inventory of 120 systems, he said the recurring cost would be in the low thousands of dollars a year. He said Erickson Solutions could deploy the software alongside existing antivirus and that the company would provide a written quote and implementation plan to county staff.
Threat context and insurance
Erickson cited recent local government ransomware incidents as justification for the added protection, and he said cyber-insurance providers increasingly expect EDR as a baseline control. Commissioners asked about false positives and operational impacts; Erickson acknowledged EDR can generate a false positive and said the vendor's cloud-based analysis and the county's IT partner would triage and release legitimate files when needed.
Next steps
County staff said they would request a formal quote and inventory update and then return with a contract for board consideration. No contract was approved at the meeting.
