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County IT director warns of rising cyberthreats, requests cybersecurity upgrades and staffing increases
Summary
Hunt County’s IT lead requested a roughly $95,000 software/maintenance increase (main driver: Microsoft Intune and Adobe subscription changes), hardware replacements and staffing adjustments to meet CJIS security rules and rising threat volume; he reported firewall statistics and urged upgrades to avoid losing CJIS access.
Hunt County’s technology director (recorded in the meeting as Brandon) told commissioners the county faces escalating cyberthreats and must invest now to remain CJIS- and cybersecurity-compliant.
The IT presentation said the county needs to implement Microsoft Intune (to manage devices and enforce multifactor authentication), move Adobe to a subscription-based Adobe Acrobat Pro to support ADA/OCR work on county documents, and upgrade firewalls and VPN tools used by law enforcement. The presenter described a $95,000 net increase in the software/maintenance line driven mainly by Intune and Adobe licensing changes, and noted additional hardware and token costs to support multifactor authentication for jail staff who cannot use personal phones.
A key claim: the presenter stated that the county’s firewalls denied millions of access attempts in a 30-day period and that the firewall logs show roughly 202,000 attempted intrusions per day in the sample period. "We have 6,700,000 things that are being denied by our firewall every 30 days, with 202,000 attempts to hack us every single day," he said. He also summarized an increase in help-desk tickets (about 1,474 in 2025 and ~1,000 so far in the first half of 2026, a 30% year-over-year increase at midyear) and argued the county is understaffed in IT compared with peer counties.
Compliance and risks: the presentation tied many requests to CJIS/DPS/FBI requirements (multifactor-authentication tokens, secure VPNs). The IT lead warned that failing a CJIS audit could remove NCIC/DPS access and disrupt courts, dispatch and law-enforcement systems. To meet CJIS mandates and new state cybersecurity expectations, the presenter asked the court to approve vendor renewals, Intune implementation and modest hardware replacement during the coming budget year.
Budget details and staffing: The IT lead proposed a 15% departmental increase to provide performance-based raises and to help retain staff; he compared county IT staffing (five staff) and salaries to peer counties to justify the request and noted that many county computers must be upgraded to Windows 11 for security compliance.
Next steps: Commissioners acknowledged cybersecurity as a high priority and asked to review specific line-item costs and whether countywide software licenses should move to a centralized line item. No final budget action occurred at the session.
Attribution: Quotes and claims attributed to the county IT director (speaker recorded in the transcript as Brandon) and to commissioners who questioned the requests.
