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Franklin County approves multi-year 'air gap' backup plan to guard against ransomware
Summary
The Board approved items 4.02'04 to replace backup, recovery and storage systems with an immutable "air gap" and an "evergreen" procurement that spreads cost over four years and shifts the purchase from a one-time capital buy to operating expenses, with a price lock for the contract term.
County CIO Sean Kreger presented a three-part technology request to replace critical backup, recovery and storage capabilities and to implement an "air gap" immutable backup system designed to mitigate ransomware attacks. Kreger described an "evergreen" purchasing model that lets the county buy needed storage incrementally and expand capacity through the vendor over time instead of a large upfront capital purchase.
"What we're looking at here is called an air gap solution, which backups are immutable, which means that they don't change and that they are inaccessible to anyone who would happen to be able to hack into our network," Kreger said, explaining the county's motivation to prevent attackers from encrypting both production systems and backups.
Commissioners asked about the availability of storage capacity amid rising global demand and whether price-lock provisions protect the county; Kreger said the county secured a price lock for the length of the agreement and expects manufacturers and data-center capacity to scale, but he acknowledged major disruptions could affect production. He also confirmed most county hardware remains on-site and that some services (like email) use cloud providers.
A commissioner moved to approve agenda items 4.02, 4.03 and 4.04 together; the Board voted in favor and the motion passed.
