County IT director seeks cybersecurity, standardization and courtroom AV upgrades in 2026 budget
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Summary
Washington County's IT director asked the budget committee to fund cybersecurity improvements, device management, standardization of hardware/software, and audiovisual upgrades in circuit courtrooms; the proposal includes increased software and training budgets and vehicle replacements for IT staff.
Washington County's IT director briefed the Financial Budget Committee on Sept. 9 about 2026 priorities: standardize county hardware and software, strengthen cybersecurity and modernize courtroom audiovisual systems.
The director said the county runs multiple versions of Office and other desktop software, which increases patching work and cybersecurity risk. He recommended standardizing on one vendor for PCs (Dell), migrating to a single Office version, consolidating Adobe licenses and deploying mobile-device management and full-disk encryption across county laptops and phones.
On cybersecurity, the director said the county completed an external penetration test and intends to add an internal pen test, monthly phishing simulations, mandatory cybersecurity training and improvements to remote-access audit capabilities. "We are committed to taking proactive steps to protect Washington County's data and reduce those risks," he said.
The IT budget request increases software-support and licensing lines to about $312,000 (planned) and raises training and travel for technical and cybersecurity training to approximately $23,000. Capital requests include servers and redundancy gear to match equipment placed at the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), two replacement IT fleet vehicles and a substantial audiovisual upgrade in circuit courtrooms; the director said vendors quoted roughly $80,000 per courtroom for AV upgrades and ADA compliance work.
Ending: The committee heard the IT priorities and asked clarifying questions; no appropriation was taken at this session.
