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Plumas County approves CrowdStrike, Cohesity cybersecurity and backup contracts amid public questions
Summary
County IT presented purchase of CrowdStrike endpoint security and Cohesity backup (not to exceed $54,002); the board approved the contracts after public questions about a past CrowdStrike outage and staffing to manage the tools.
Plumas County's board approved procurement of CrowdStrike endpoint detection and response and a Cohesity immutable backup solution on Jan. 7, with staff emphasizing the purchases are critical for business continuity and recovery.
Gregory Ellenson of county IT and other IT staff said CrowdStrike monitors endpoints to stop attackers and Cohesity provides immutable backups that cannot be altered after a breach, enabling recovery. The combined contract was presented as critical to protecting county systems; staff said the renewal did not include an across‑the‑board price increase after negotiation.
Public participants raised a prior global CrowdStrike outage last year and asked whether other vendors were evaluated and whether the county had personnel to manage the products. An online commenter asserted CrowdStrike had been hacked; county IT responded that the incident was an internal update that caused a global outage, not a malware breach, and said the county plans to outsource some management functions because local hiring has been difficult.
"This is industry‑leading EDR," IT staff said, adding the county had renegotiated terms after the vendor's update problem and planned third‑party management for specialized administration. The board voted to approve the agreement as presented.
Board members supporting the purchase cited the importance of protecting county data and infrastructure: one supervisor said the county should "spend whatever we need to spend to support the security" of critical systems.
