in the last month, the city of Northport has placed its assistance technology director on go away and spent greater than $220,000 to identify and handle vulnerabilities in its desktop programs.
On Feb. 6, period in-between metropolis Administrator Joseph Rose placed IT director Michael Ramm on paid administrative leave. officials have declined to assert why Ramm changed into placed on depart, citing it as a confidential personnel count number. Two weeks after Ramm changed into placed on depart, the city Council voted to pay a Viperline solutions $9,100 to determine the security of Northport's computer, networking and e-mail programs.
right through the Feb. 20 assembly where the assessment was approved, Rose noted that there turned into a lot to evaluate.
"we have four fire stations, a police station, a water remedy plant, a wastewater medicine plant, metropolis hall and all types of different stuff," Rose referred to. "Viperline will are available and examine all of our IT infrastructure."
city lawyer Ron Davis talked about Thursday that Viperline, a Birmingham-based IT company, has accomplished its contrast and made a number of thoughts to shore up the metropolis's cyber security. Their solutions protected $215,000 of hardware and application improvements, practicing for the metropolis's IT body of workers and subscriptions and licenses for firewalls, cloud storage and greater.
"here's a condition where we're playing capture-up. These are steps that should had been taken and phased in someday in the past and they had been now not," Davis stated. "That's the cause it's such a big expenditure at the present."
The city Council on Monday will vote to fund the fees made for the advancements.
Davis talked about Ramm will remain on leave whereas the city evaluates and upgrades its systems.
as a result of Ramm is a branch head and earns more than $seventy five,000 a 12 months, any discussion of skills disciplinary motion towards him ought to be done by way of the city Council and in public, Davis said.
attempts to reach Ramm for comment have been unsuccessful.
