With the advances of the technological world, Grimes County is making additional upgrades to protect themselves.
IT Director Greg Cannon presented a contract for a new firewall at Wednesday’s meeting of Commissioner’s Court. He says it comes about from tuning things back to assist another department.
“Recently, the District Attorney’s office has begun uploading large amount of video to their software called ‘eProsecutor’…that process was taking several hours at a time…we discovered we have the firewall tuned to the most advanced inspection of traffic,” said Cannon. “In order to allow things to upload quicker for the DA’s office, we had to relax some of the firewall requirements.”
Cannon says he does not believe it qualifies as an emergency expenditure for the county, but needs in place within the next 6 months.
He said too that the purchase of a new one is essentially the only option.
“The one we have now is about 6 years old, it has been discontinued. If we were to replace it, we would have to buy a used one, or find someone who has a new one on a shelf somewhere,” said Cannon.
The cost will total just a hair under $10,000, and the county will utilize money from their Contingency Fund to purchase the new firewall immediately.
Cannon noted the new system should last about 5 years.