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City’s IT contractor outlines cybersecurity posture; council requests detailed vulnerability and compliance reports
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Summary
IWork consultant Jeremiah Strickland briefed the Saginaw City Council on endpoint protection, SIEM logging, Office 365 monitoring, phishing training and backups; council members asked for counts of critical/major/minor vulnerabilities, compliance‑framework alignment and recurring IT reporting.
Jeremiah Strickland, a consultant with IWork, told the Saginaw City Council the city has layered cybersecurity controls including endpoint protection on city devices, SIEM logging tied to a managed SOC, Office 365 monitoring, phishing simulation and user training, and cloud backups for servers and mailboxes.
"We're trying to protect, you know, all the way down from the endpoint device all the way to the people," Strickland said, describing a combination of technical tools and staff monitoring through a third‑party SOC. He explained the city uses a logging and SIEM pipeline that flags anomalous activity and can isolate devices, and that the Huntress platform monitors Office 365 and can suspend accounts that show malicious behavior.
Council members pressed for more granular data. One council member (speaker 3) asked for a simple breakdown such as "five critical, 10 medium and 30 minor" vulnerabilities and how many remained open since 2023; Strickland said he could provide tailored reports and would supply whatever level of detail the council requested. Staff and other IT personnel offered to compile monthly or weekly summaries of tickets, patch status and encryption reports.
On authentication and mobile devices, council members raised concerns about phone lockout policies and using phones for multi‑factor authentication. Staff said city‑issued phones are managed under Apple Business/MDM and can be wiped or configured centrally; personal phones were not under city control.
Strickland recommended continued phishing simulations and training (KnowBe4) and confirmed that backups of physical servers and Office 365 mailboxes are stored offsite to enable restores. Council members requested a compliance framework comparison and recurring IT reports so they can track progress toward remediation targets.
Councilors were invited to follow up with IT staff for more detailed, nonpublic technical data; staff agreed to prepare a report to the council with the requested vulnerability counts and compliance mapping.
