The City of Soldotna voted to appropriate funds for IT improvements.
$60,000 was appropriated from the General Fund and the Small Capital Projects Fund to award a contract to the IT firm, GCSIT. GCSIT made recommendations to the City for remedial work as part of assessments performed in 2013 and 2019 by GCSIT.
Recommendations:
- Remove VLAN 1 from production environment.
- Implement a DMZ network and move public facing machines.
- Refresh backup repository hardware and implement automated off -site backups.
- Isolate EOL machines.
- Follow- up IT infrastructure assessment.
City Manager Stephanie Queen told the City Council last Wednesday evening that this ordinance would both appropriate funds and award a contract with GCSIT. “This funding would allow us to bring on some additional professional services support to tackle some of the larger or more technical projects that have really been tough for us to devote staff, resources, and time to. It’s been a project that I fully support. I know it is a need. When COVID hit, our IT department really got a lot of additional work that they weren’t counting on. I support outsourcing this to a firm that is very familiar to the city’s infrastructure. They have done a lot of work with us in the past.”
City Councilman Jordan Chilson said, “I actually work in this field and am pretty familiar with the technical aspects of what this appropriation is seeking to accomplish. Not to dive into why they’re important, I’ll just say they’re very important for the security of this city’s infrastructure. Whatever we can to do correct those weaknesses and get these implemented ASAP, I’m fully supportive of. I see value working with a firm that’s familiar with the city’s infrastructure because some of the tasks that are being sought to be accomplished through this are pretty technical in nature. I feel that if we were to look to other firms, you not only introduce delays and patching, pretty serious security vulnerabilities, but you also introduce potential flaws in the system in having people muddle in there that aren’t familiar with it. I’m very familiar with having a firm that knows our systems and can do it soon.”
Ordinance 2020-027 unanimously passed.
