County departments report IT outages and onboarding problems after vendor transition; commissioners ask for weekly updates

County department heads and staff raised multiple complaints on March 7 about outages and configuration problems following a recent IT vendor transition to Century Business (referred to in the meeting as “Century”). The issues cited included a disrupted e-recording service in the Register of Deeds office, one workstation repeatedly failing to log in, and broader concerns about remote-access software, dark-web exposures for some county email addresses, and device updates for older equipment.

Register of Deeds staff described a multi-day outage that stopped incoming e-records and required help from the county’s local IT technician, identified in the meeting as Sonny, and Century technicians. The office said the external e-record feed was not arriving, Century’s technicians had attempted remediation and communication problems arose during the vendor’s onboarding. The Register of Deeds expressed particular concern about unauthorized access to desktop sessions and requested that the county continue using the local IT provider for sensitive systems until issues are resolved.

Century representatives attending the meeting (Kelly and Jeff Murphy) acknowledged gaps in communication during the kickoff and said some departments were inadvertently enrolled or not enrolled into services as intended. Century staff outlined next steps: enroll endpoints, validate backups and server settings, run cybersecurity training and dark‑web scans, and provide weekly written summaries to commissioners (filed to Michelle Morris via BCC to avoid Open Meetings Law issues). County staff asked for faster on‑site response times for high-priority outages; Century reiterated it offers on‑site and remote service options and committed to improve initial response and escalation.

Century flagged several technical findings in the county’s network inventory: two physical servers in the courthouse running three virtual servers, an additional server at public health, one firewall in the courthouse, and multiple devices at end-of-service contract status. Century also reported dark-web scan results for exposed credentials on several email accounts and recommended password resets and enrollment in the cybersecurity training platform. Century proposed an asset-management plan, backup modernization (replacing StorageCraft with a cloud-backed solution integrated with on‑site NAS devices), and a phased device replacement schedule.

Commissioners and department heads agreed to place a weekly Century update on the agenda for the next month to monitor progress. Century staff and the county will coordinate on-site enrollment of departmental devices; Kelly suggested scheduling technicians to enroll endpoints on a near-term date, and Century agreed to send email summaries with the three commissioners BCC’d to comply with open meetings requirements.

Why it matters: the outages affected public-facing services (e-recording and some office services) and internal functions (time-clock data and backups). County staff requested clarification of the vendor scope, a roster of endpoints enrolled, and confirmation there will be no additional cost for correcting problems caused during onboarding. Century told the board there are no additional charges for correcting onboarding errors; follow-up work is being scheduled.