Montana Association of Counties pitches managed IT and cybersecurity services to Prairie County commissioners

Carly King, a representative of the Montana Association of Counties, briefed Prairie County commissioners on a county‑focused managed IT and cybersecurity program and offered to prepare a contract and invoice comparison for the county.

King said she’d invited two colleagues to the call: Tyler Bracken, identified in the briefing as the MCT network engineer, and Brandon Harris, identified as the Mako peer review coordinator. “I am Carly King with Montana Association of Counties,” King said when opening the call and explained the group’s goal was to provide counties cost‑effective technology and cybersecurity support.

King summarized the program as three pillars: standard managed network and disaster‑recovery services; cybersecurity training and comprehensive assessments; and embedded threat‑information resources delivered under a memorandum agreement with the attorney general and the Department of Justice. “We have a memorandum agreement with the attorney general, and I sit part time in the threat intelligence unit,” King said, describing how the arrangement lets the association provide law‑enforcement contacts and threat information to counties.

Speakers described cost and support details. King said MCT’s pricing historically compares favorably to the state DIS provider and typically yields “about 15 to 20% cost savings” while producing fewer surprise invoices. A presenter explained the procurement model as subscription‑style managed services: rather than counties buying hardware and paying large upfront costs, the provider bundles equipment, licensing and maintenance into a monthly fee and replaces failed hardware as part of the service.

Brandon Harris, speaking from Broadwater County experience, said the county’s switch to MCT had gone “so smooth” and that officials were “extremely happy with MCT.” He encouraged commissioners to contact Broadwater County’s sheriff’s office for reference information.

King also described operational features counties emphasized: one monthly on‑site technician visit is included under the contract at no extra charge, and larger physical tasks are quoted separately. On help‑desk service levels, King said the provider’s policy requires staff to communicate with a county within four hours of a reported issue: “the response time is they have to respond within 4 hours no matter what.” She added that when MCT is fully managing a county the group monitors systems and may detect and respond to outages before county staff are aware.

Practical next steps were agreed: King asked to receive the county’s current invoices and counts of users, firewalls and servers so she could produce an apples‑to‑apples proposal; a county representative agreed to provide invoice examples. King said she would start working on a comparison and promised to deliver it to the commissioners.

The briefing closed with the group scheduling a follow‑up meeting to review the proposed contract and comparison. No formal action or vote was taken during the session.