Meeker County IT director outlines security upgrades, Microsoft 365 migration, immutable backups and staffing limits

Rob, Meeker County IT director, told the Meeker County Board of Commissioners on Aug. 19 that the county’s small IT team supports roughly 260 users across county facilities and a broad set of hardware and services, and described recent security and backup upgrades and an upcoming migration to Microsoft 365 licensing.

Key points presented

- Staffing and scope: Rob said the IT department consists of three people who support roughly 260 users across the Meeker County Justice Center, government center, highway department and remote offices in Watkins, Dassel and Eden Valley. "Between the 3 of us, we managed to support approximately 260 users," he said.

- Devices and services: The department supports about 300 computers (mostly laptops), more than 175 printers and scanners, roughly 115 mobile devices and 42 Meraki wireless access points. The county runs a virtual environment of about 32 virtual servers and several physical servers that store surveillance, squad and body‑cam video.

- Microsoft 365 migration: The county is converting users to Microsoft 365 licensing, which Rob said will provide always‑current Office apps, conditional access controls and advanced threat protection features. He described conditional access examples — restricting access by location, device health or time of day — and said these features will help meet BCA and IRS audit/compliance requirements.

- Backups and ransomware protection: Rob described the county’s use of Veeam for daily backups with immutable cloud copies and on‑site archives. "We currently have a retention policy of those immutable backups of 2 years," he said, noting on‑site weekly, monthly and yearly archives for recovery options.

- Email and content filtering: The county uses Barracuda for inbound email filtering (about 2,300 emails blocked weekly) and Zix for scanning outgoing mail to automatically encrypt messages containing sensitive data. Rob said geofencing blocks emails originating outside the United States and Canada to reduce malicious traffic.

- Endpoint protection and active response: Meeker County uses CrowdStrike Falcon in an aggressive "active mode" configuration that can isolate an affected device from the network automatically. Rob said CrowdStrike can take immediate action even outside normal business hours and that the vendor notifies county IT of actions taken.

- Security training and phishing simulations: The county uses KnowBe4 to deliver monthly cybersecurity training and to send simulated phishing emails; Rob said completion rates typically run between 90–95 percent and that simulated failures trigger zusätzliche training assignments.

Questions and constraints

Commissioners asked about user counts (Rob said devices are counted as one user), whether outside participants on Teams have network access (Rob said they do not), and the security implications of AI tools included in Microsoft licensing. Rob said county staff are discussing AI guidelines and that an AI committee is working on policy questions.

Rob also said the county lacks a dedicated network security specialist and relies on outside vendors (Marco Technologies, Morris Electronics) for specialized support; commissioners noted that this is a common challenge for counties and expressed appreciation for the IT team’s work.

Ending

Rob closed by listing IT department goals: quick help‑desk response, protecting data and compliance, effective resource allocation and continuous improvement. The board acknowledged the presentation and asked staff to return with progress updates as the Microsoft 365 migration and conditional access features are implemented.