Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the It Security topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
County IT director outlines firewall rollouts, storage cleanup and security savings
Summary
Dickinson County IT director said dedicated firewalls at satellite sites, a licensing strategy and backup cleanup could save the county tens of thousands annually while improving resilience and defending against a sharp rise in email phishing attacks.
Dustin Parks, the county’s director of IT and EIS, told commissioners the county is deploying dedicated firewalls at satellite locations so the county can negotiate with multiple internet-service providers and reduce vendor lock‑in. He said Starlink (and a government priority option via an AT&T government offering) is under evaluation for remote sites where terrestrial service is poor.
Parks also reported substantial cost savings from an enterprise licensing approach: by applying a single top‑level license across accounts the county could avoid buying high‑end licenses for every user and save roughly $82,700 a year. He described a cleanup program that recovered roughly 30 terabytes of storage and warned that phishing and credential‑harvesting attempts have increased across Kansas counties, prompting proposals to strengthen Microsoft‑level protections and administrative controls.
