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County IT director urges immediate upgrades to wireless, phones, servers and firewall
Summary
Strafford County IT staff told the subcommittee aging network hardware, obsolete phone handoff equipment and an end‑of‑life firewall increase operational and security risk; staff proposed wireless replacement, SIP phone handoff, switches, server licensing and fiber upgrades.
Paul, the county IT director, told Strafford County’s subcommittee that multiple network components are at or near end‑of‑life and need replacement to maintain security and reliability.
The IT proposal includes roughly 200 new wireless access points (vendor survey and floor‑by‑floor coverage mapping), replacement of legacy phone handoff equipment to move from T1 to SIP over fiber (quoted at about $136,000), replacement of core switches (quoted at about $17,000), and an operating‑system and licensing refresh for servers (figures discussed in the meeting ranged from $80,000 to $180,000 and will be clarified in follow‑up documentation).
Paul also flagged the county firewall as end‑of‑life and said insurers and U.S. Homeland Security partners have run penetration tests and offered vulnerability reports; he said maintaining support and patching is essential to reduce ransomware and intrusion risk. "The firewall end of life is expected to April '26 ... they put us into some projects where they actually try and penetrate our system and then they'll send us a report of vulnerability," Paul said.
IT staff recommended in‑house storage and backup architecture rather than a costly cloud migration for some services, citing recurring cloud license costs and control considerations for protected health information and resident data. They noted that Riverside‑related IT costs are typically fronted by the county and reimbursed over asset life via Medicaid reimbursement rules.
Committee members asked for clarification on licensing cost discrepancies and were told that final budgets will be updated after vendor bids and a detailed cost breakdown is provided.
