Hood County workshop explores adding 24/7 monitoring, fee changes and fiber to shore up Granbury Regional Radio Network

Granbury and Hood County officials met in Granbury on April 30 to review the Regional Radio Network that links local law enforcement, dispatch centers and other public-safety partners and to consider expanded 24/7 monitoring and network-hardening steps. Chris Collins, chief information security officer for the City of Granbury, told the Hood County commissioners’ workshop that the current system lacks continuous engineering oversight and includes “spurs” or single points of failure that make some sites vulnerable to outages.

Collins described the network’s technical split between an IT stack (firewalls, VPNs and administration) and a communications stack (the P25 authorization functions) and said vendor contracts with Harris provide maintenance but not the continuous security operations center coverage Collins believes the GRN needs. “With today’s technology, you need 24 by 7, 365, eyes on glass watching it,” Collins said, adding that the city is proposing an enhanced monitoring package that would move the system from a reactive posture toward…