The exterior of Bartholomew County Courthouse in Columbus, Ind., pictured, Thursday, Sept. 29, 2016. Mike Wolanin | The Republic
Yet another big-ticket item has been approved for order by county authorities.
The Bartholomew County Commissioners have agreed to allow the Information and facts Technologies department pay $792,928 to buy laptop or computer components that will build a countywide networking process. There is $515,538 for the buy currently in the IT department’s spending plan, although the commissioners have agreed to provide $277,390 from the telecommunications fund.
The county-wide networking method is normally hidden out of community view. Nevertheless, the process is really important mainly because it handles all of the county’s digital data shops, IT director Scott Mayes reported.
That includes servers, info storage, switches, firewalls, laptop computer pcs, handheld gadgets, cameras, telephones, printers and copiers, just to name a few.
It is only via this technique that these merchandise can communicate with application, internet and other present day technological innovation necessary to perform county enterprise, Mayes said.
It’s been 13 years because the county obtained a countywide networking program for $900,000. Considering that that time, Mayes’ department has been compelled to obtain extra devices needed for the ever-shifting needs of the network.
For instance, there is a much larger desire for audio and video recordings these days, he claimed. In addition, the two the safety and telephone systems now use a World wide web Protocol that allows personal network gadgets to connect to precise other community units by using machine IP addresses and a prevalent details packet composition.
“When the present countywide networking system was bought 13 a long time ago, there was no demand from customers for any of those people attributes,” Mayes claimed.
The new procedure will be obtained from Fortinet, a 23-yr-aged cyber protection firm primarily based in Sunnyvale, California.
During conferences concerning laptop authorities and county officers, Fortinet was decided on for the reason that their process was regarded the most inclusive and flexible remedy for the county’s IT demands, Mayes said.
A very similar procedure made by Cisco Devices of San Jose, California was also regarded. Even so, Mayes explained the county would have been forced to expend about $1.14 million with Cisco just to get near to the expert services offered by Fortinet for substantially much less revenue.
But from the county IT director’s viewpoint, the most effective edge delivered by Fortinetis that they choose a cyber safety solution to start with on all things.
“Everything they do and all the machines they generate is all section of what they simply call their ‘security fabric’,” Mayes claimed.
That protection fabric makes it possible for the county’s community to immediately see and dynamically isolate impacted equipment, partition community segments, update principles, push out new guidelines, and take away malware, in accordance to the Fortinet web site.
Mayes also explained the Fortinet technique will save county taxpayers money over the prolonged run.
