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County approves managed-switch upgrade after Stronghold warns of network risks
Summary
Stronghold Data briefed the commission on managed IT services, ticketing and project progress. Commissioners approved a hardware upgrade to replace end-of-life switches countywide to enable VLAN segmentation and improve network security; the board asked for department-level cost breakdowns and oversight of access changes.
The Bourbon County Commission gave initial approval for countywide managed-network upgrades after Stronghold Data outlined project progress and told commissioners aging network switches were limiting security and services.
Chelsea, Stronghold’s project manager, told the board the vendor has invested 109.75 hours on 58 tickets since the company came on as the county’s interim managed-services provider and that many service incidents relate to the aging network. Stronghold staff said moving from unmanaged to managed switches would allow the county to segment traffic by department (VLANs), restrict access rights and reduce cascading service failures that have affected the sheriff’s office and other county systems.
Stronghold presented a project update showing the effort is about 26% complete and described a hardware quote for managed switches and related work. The vendor recommended upgrading end-of-life switches throughout county facilities to enable secure traffic segregation. Commissioners asked whether the sheriff’s systems could be separated from the rest of the county’s traffic and whether that would require a separate ISP or a new firewall; Stronghold and the sheriff’s representatives explained options and said separating traffic could be done either by parsing services into a separate ISP connection or by installing firewalls and managed switches — the latter being the recommended path to maintain overall continuity and security.
Commissioners requested a department-by-department cost breakdown and asked the vendor to prioritize replacing switches that present the greatest operational risk. After discussion a motion to authorize Stronghold to proceed with the hardware request (as presented) passed by voice vote. Commissioners also directed that any requests to change system access permissions should come to the board for oversight until a formal access and onboarding process is adopted.
Stronghold also offered free consulting services included in its managed-services agreement to help the county consider software choices, intranet (SharePoint) deployments and best practices for access control. Commissioners asked staff to set a work session to develop an access-request process and onboarding checklist that would involve human resources and elected officials.
