Supervisors okay contract with cyber security firm

BY BROOKS TAYLOR

Mt. Pleasant News

County computers are going under the microscope sometime early next year.

During their regular meeting Thursday, county supervisors approved entering into a contract with RSM, a computer security firm located throughout the United States, to do a cyber security study of county-owned computers. Several department heads have been asking the supervisors for such a study for some time and recently stepped up lobbying efforts.

?We are tentatively thinking about doing it at the end of January,? said Supervisor Greg Moeller. ?We haven?t set up a particular date, but we?re shooting for the end of January.?

The county will be using the services of the RSM offices in West Burlington and Waterloo for the work, which will cost $11,000. The fee does not include mileage or overnight lodging for RSM employees, which the county would have to pay.

Supervisor Chairman Gary See said he hopes the study is beneficial. ?Security is sometimes helpless from what I?ve read. If somebody wants to get in, they can. Most of the hacking doesn?t have a dollar figure assigned to it.?

RSM will do testing for information discovery and a vulnerability assessment.

In the information discovery phase, which takes approximately 24 hours, RSM will explore information sources using passive techniques to obtain information about the environment.

Some of those information sources include search engines, online telephone directories, websites, web searches and domain name service lookups.

The vulnerability assessment will take approximately 60 hours to complete. During the assessment, RSM will perform vulnerability scanning activities in order to determine what services and technologies are accessible externally or internally.

That includes some of the following actions: executing automated scanner and/or other tools against the target networks to identify vulnerabilities; tracing IP packet paths to aid in mapping the topology of the network; performing detailed port scans (both manual and automated) to identify the types of devices, operating systems, software and services available within the target IP address ranges; security issues resulting from weak configurations, default passwords and insecure protocols; analyzing the test results and validating the potential security vulnerabilities, such that only accurate and applicable vulnerabilities are reported.

County Treasurer Ana Lair said she welcomed the study. ?A lot of county treasurer?s offices in Iowa have been affected by hacking.?

Supervisor sub-committee reports dominated the remainder of the meeting.

See said he attended the 8th District Judicial Commission meeting and said a $10-million budget is being proposed for the next fiscal year. He said the commission anticipates having a $1.4-million carryover budget. See also said there are plans to hire two more parole officers.

Supervisor Vice Chairman Marc Lindeen said the Southeast Iowa Link (SEIL) was rated first in the state for the 2015-16 fiscal year for the percentage of data attached to each client. SEIL is a regional mental health group. He also said that SEIL would be setting county budgets at $35.05 per capita for its operating budget in fiscal 2017.

Henry County Community Action spent over $60,000 in aid for county residents during November, Lindeen said. Of that total, 73 households received $3,965 for food. Some 131 applications were approved for heating assistance. The total amount approved was $58,280, which averages out to about $450 per person, he said. ?We are about right at the state average,? Lindeen added.

Moeller reported on the monthly meeting of the Regional Utility Service Systems (RUSS) board of directors. An article on the meeting appears elsewhere in today?s News.

Supervisors will meet again in regular session Tuesday, Dec. 20, at 9 a.m., in the Henry County Courthouse.