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Simcoe County to fund $200,000 cyber security assessment

August 29, 2024   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

Due to an increase in cyber security incidents impacting the province’s public sector, Simcoe County IT staff have a plan in the 2024 budget to conduct a security assessment. They are recommending that the assessment’s scope be increased to include municipal partners.

The Simcoe Community Access Network (SCAN) partners’ security assessment would include a review of 33 organizations to provide a complete view of the external footprint of the County and its network partners.

The total cost of the SCAN partners’ security assessment is approximately $200,000.

The County’s IT department has $50,000 in the 2024 budget for a Simcoe County assessment. It was approved by Council to provide an additional $150,000 to include all the SCAN partners.

During an Aug. 13, County Committee of the Whole meeting, a report on information technology was provided by the Information Technology department.

“There has been a dramatic increase in cyber security incidents impacting the Ontario Public Sector,” the report stated. “Most recently the City of Hamilton and Town of Huntsville have experienced service disruptions resulting from cyber incidents. County IT staff have a plan in the 2024 budget to conduct a security assessment and are recommending the scope be increased to include municipal partners.

“The Simcoe Community Access Network (SCAN) partners security assessment would include a review of 33 organizations (Schedule 1 – List of organizations for proposed Security Assessment), 214 IP addresses, and 60 Internet facing domains. This will provide a complete view of the external footprint of the County and our network partners. Each partner will receive individualized assessment reports summarizing findings and security recommendations.”

A security baseline will: Establish the minimum level of security that all systems and applications must meet, ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, provide a foundation for implementing security controls, and simplify security management processes to reduce the risk of security breaches.

The vulnerability assessment identifies vulnerabilities and provides recommendations to reduce or eliminate risks for intrusion attempts, domain name service and domain registration involving subdomain discovery, firewall, password strength and authentication, email security, host server security, and transport layer security. 

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