Dallas County commissioners may begin searching for a new IT director after facing a recent cyber attack in October in which government data was compromised and shared on the dark web.
The county’s IT Executive Governance Committee recommends searching for a new director of the IT department, according to KERA News, and the commissioners court is expected to receive a formal request next week to approve the search.
The position is currently vacant and has been since July when the former IT director, Melissa Kraft, took over as Frisco’s chief information officer, according to Industry Insider.
However, Commissioner Andrew Sommerman indicated that he would rather wait to begin searching for a new director until after the county receives its report from Gartner, the research and consulting firm hired by the county in August to analyze its computer system.
“We don’t want to have a brand new director without knowing the direction the Gartner report would tell us to go to,” said Sommerman, per KERA.
The county is expected to receive its report from Gartner in the near future.
While Sommerman said the county should wait, Commissioner Elba Garcia said a new director should be hired promptly.
“We need a new IT director as soon as possible,” she told The Dallas Morning News in October. “Someone with experience and can put a team together that can look into the future and solve some of the big problems in Dallas County.”
Meanwhile, the county is still reeling from a cyber attack that took place in October, as previously reported by The Dallas Express. At the time, the IT Department had no director.
Earlier this month, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins confirmed that data stolen from the county’s computer systems was posted online by the ransomware cybercrime organization known as “Play.”
He did not specify any details about the data, including how much or what type of information was compromised.
Officials in the county’s IT department warned that its computer system was vulnerable months before the attack occurred, reported KERA.
