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Tri‑Valley IT reports successful containment of cyber incidents and $60,000 in in‑house savings
Summary
Technology staff said they contained an ongoing VPN security incident, will update camera firmware to mitigate a new ransomware strain, and completed an Active Directory upgrade in-house, saving about $60,000 compared with contracting the work.
The district's technology director updated the board on recent IT work, cybersecurity responses and infrastructure upgrades.
The director said the district's switch-replacement project is nearly complete and that an in‑house upgrade to Active Directory likely saved roughly $60,000 compared with hiring an outside vendor. "Probably saved ourselves about $60,000 of money by doing it in house ourselves," he said.
He described a months-long security effort to protect the district's VPN and to harden systems after an Akira ransomware variant that can spread via insecure camera firmware was observed in the wild. The tech lead said the department identified and reduced the attack surface and plans a multiweek firmware-update effort for security cameras.
The director also reported finishing an evaluation of a data-inventory product that checks for overexposed personally identifiable information; the product found zero overexposed sensitive files in the district's environment, which the vendor noted is an uncommon result.
Board members asked about ongoing protections and unplanned cybersecurity workload; the director said these projects are now part of routine operations and that staff start each day monitoring emerging threats.
What happens next: the tech department will complete the switch project during spring break, proceed with camera firmware updates, and continue monitoring for new threats.
