At a meeting last Tuesday, November 21, Information Technology Director Sherrie Ilg discussed plans for Thurston County to enter into a contract with Varonis, a data security company.
The county received $155,000 from the Department of Homeland Security’s State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program. These funds will assist state and local governments in managing and reducing systemic cyber risk.
“With the rapid expansion of the move of data to and services to the cloud, Thurston County is at risk of having a data leakage or exposure event and this solution will help us manage that risk,” said Ilg.
“A lot of the effort we put into our cybersecurity has to do with hardening our network and this is in addition to tracking the data. Our new systems are becoming more and more complex and users don't necessarily know that they're providing access to things that data that perhaps they shouldn't and this will help us manage that,” added Ilg.
Ilg added that the grant will also help manage user accounts that are no longer in use, such as when an employee moves to another office and the system does not remove the accounts from them promptly.
“Thank you so much for being proactive. Cybersecurity is a topic of big conversation, especially when it comes [to] the threats out there. It's great that we have this grant and that you have a plan to implement this forward,” District 1 Commissioner Carolina Mejia thanked Ilg.
The commissioners approved the motion for the department to enter into a contract with Varonis to implement a data security solution.
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