Lawrence County commissioners voted unanimously to approve a subscription agreement to replace the county's mass-notification service after a security incident disrupted the previous vendor’s platform.

Public Safety Director Chad Strobel told the board the county lost access to its prior provider (OnSolve, known for the Code Red product) following a security breach in November and that federal authorities had revoked the county’s ability to send IPAWS messages through that vendor. "We lost access to the platform without any notification of us that it had happened," Strobel said. He said the state alerted the county to the loss of service.

Strobel said county officials joined with counterparts in nearby counties to evaluate vendors and negotiated a discounted three-year arrangement with Reed Group (the vendor presented to the board). He described year-one pricing of $10,275 and a total three-year discounted price of $24,342.50, and said the vendor was building the county’s system and could go live within about a week of contract execution. "They preemptively started building our system... As soon as they get the agreement, we're gonna go live," Strobel said.

Strobel also said municipalities could be provided user access, with local emergency management coordinators as primary administrators; he noted that coverage across county lines depends on intergovernmental certificate arrangements and that, without an agreement, messages would not automatically cross into neighboring Beaver County.

Commissioners asked whether neighboring counties were participating; Strobel said Butler County had signed and Mercer County was considering the same proposal. The board approved Resolution 406 to enter the agreement by a roll-call vote in which all commissioners recorded 'Yes.'

The vote restores a main channel for county mass alerts and is meant to reinstate public-safety messaging that Strobel described as unavailable after the breach. No vendor representative spoke at the meeting; county staff said they had already begun technical work to bring the system online.