Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Technology It Cybersecurity topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
County IT warns of remote-access appliance end-of-life; replacement may increase licensing costs
Summary
County IT staff told supervisors that a remote-access appliance used for VPN-style access will reach end-of-life in October and the vendor's replacement uses named-user cloud licensing, which could increase costs and require policy guidance.
Muscatine County information-technology staff briefed supervisors Sept. 22 on an upcoming end-of-life for a remote-access appliance the county uses to provide remote system access.
IT staff (Bill) said the vendor notified the county that the appliance will be discontinued at the end of October after the vendor found multiple vulnerabilities. The county has been testing an alternative during the past month; the proposed replacement is cloud-based and uses named-user licensing rather than the county’s current concurrent-user appliance model.
Bill said the county currently has roughly 40 user accounts that can access the appliance, but the new named-user licensing would require a license for every account, which could materially change costs. He also said the county is testing multi-factor authentication for Windows desktop logins — a requirement for users who access criminal-justice information — and that the county is about a year behind on compliance for some requirements. “We have a remote access appliance that we've used for years. And it is going end of life at the October,” Bill said, adding the vendor “is discontinuing it” and the replacement “is not a 1 to 1 solution replacement.”
IT staff said some vendor-provided licensing would be available at no charge for a limited time, but longer-term licensing costs and a transition plan remain unresolved; staff said they will seek guidance from supervisors within the next one to two weeks on how to proceed. Bill also outlined that named-user licensing would not require the entire county workforce to be licensed but likely would cover a selected group of users, including HVAC vendors, maintenance accounts for jail systems, and a set of county staff who require remote access. He said roughly 10 HVAC vendor licenses and several additional licenses are in current use and that converting to named-user licenses could remove about 17 concurrent slots from the pool immediately.
No formal action was taken; IT staff requested direction on whether to accept short-term vendor licensing offers and how the board wishes to balance cost and access for remote operations.
