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IT warns of out-of-warranty servers and outlines backups, SIEM and cloud plans
Summary
IT Director Mac McCoy told commissioners the county has implemented sustainable backups and a SIEM, is pursuing AI governance and network segmentation grants, and that the county's hypervisor servers are out of warranty — he cited roughly 90 servers needing replacement or migration as the department evaluates cloud and hybrid options.
Mac McCoy, Cowlitz County IT director, briefed the board on the department's mission, strategic goals and recent accomplishments, telling commissioners the county has established more robust data backups and launched a security information and event management (SIEM) system to improve threat detection.
McCoy said the county has implemented endpoint security tooling (Kaseya) and added annual cybersecurity awareness training into the county LMS. He described a five-phase approach to meeting NIST AI risk management framework expectations after state guidance and said the county secured grant funding for network segmentation in line with Senate Bill 2014 compliance work.
On infrastructure risk, McCoy said the county's servers are beyond their warranty window. "I think about — well, all of them. It's all a number would be — if I'm giving you a number, let's say 90 servers that are all out of warranty," he said, warning that hardware replacement quotes can be expensive and that a hybrid cloud approach could reduce long-term CapEx and improve disaster recovery.
He said staff are evaluating Microsoft 365 tenancy requirements for public-records search (likely a G5 tier need) and planning PeopleSoft renewal discussions and a SharePoint migration, with vendor assessments and cost estimates forthcoming.
