The Dallas City Council approved a nearly $4 million deal Wednesday to get a new system that alerts the city’s information technology department of possible cyber attacks. The approval comes as the city is nearly two months into its recovery from a ransomware attack.
The City Council, without discussion, approved allowing Houston-based technology service provider Netsync Network Solutions to help the city get a threat and anomaly detection system for the Information and Technology Services Department for three years. City documents refer to the purchase as a system upgrade that will include security monitoring 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
“This equipment and associated services will be crucial to protecting the city’s network from cyber threats and hacks by alerting the Department of Information and Technology Services’ Security Operations Center to threats and abnormalities on the city network,” said city documents describing the council agenda item. “This solution will aid in protecting the city’s network and systems against internal and external cyber threats to the organization including potential ransomware.”
Shawn Sutton, an strategic account manager with Netsync, said the city would be getting cybersecurity platform MixMode. He described it as a security and information event manager that “in basic terms, gives you a bird’s-eye view of your network looking for issues before they cause business interruptions.”
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A week before the May 3 ransomware attack, the City Council also approved a three-year, more than $873,000 contract with Netsync for the group to help the city get a threat detection option for devices such as city servers and employees’ desktops and laptop computers.
City communications director Catherine Cuellar declined Wednesday to give any update on the city’s latest progress in its ransomware recovery. She said any new information from the city would be posted to its public website, which hasn’t been done since Friday when the city’s public library online system was back up for the first time since the May 3 attack.
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