The Dallas City Council authorized spending nearly $4 million on a new system to detect potential cyber attacks on Wednesday.
Council members on June 28 authorized a $3.9 million three-year agreement for a “threat and anomaly detection system.” The total cost includes the purchase of the system and routine maintenance and support for it.
The system will be purchased from Houston-based technology company Netsync Network Solutions.
“This equipment and associated services will be crucial to protecting the city’s network from cyber threats and hacks by alerting the Department of Information and Technology Services’ Security Operations Center to threats and abnormalities on the city network,” according to a city document.
“This solution will aid in protecting the city’s network and systems against internal and external cyber threats to the organization including potential ransomware.”
Netsync strategic account manager Shaw Sutton said Dallas will be acquiring a security program called MixMode.
“In basic terms, [MixMode] gives you a bird’s-eye view of your network looking for issues before they cause business interruptions,” he explained to NBC 5.
Among other IT-related spending, council members also approved an additional $22 million upgrade to the City’s financial management software. The approved item consists of a 10-year agreement with Carahsoft Technology.
Both of these items passed unanimously on the consent agenda of Wednesday’s council meeting — the last meeting before council members take a one-month summer recess.
Council members have discussed the purported ransomware attack and subsequent recovery efforts at several meetings over the past two months. However, all the discussions took place behind closed doors in executive sessions inaccessible to the public. In fact, council members were told by the City communications director to keep quiet on subjects relating to the apparent attack.
The City has long suffered from transparency issues across several departments under City Manager T.C. Broadnax.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, the City’s IT Department is also seeking $25,000,000 from the upcoming 2024 Capital Bond Program.
While a number of public-facing web services have been brought back online, however, the City is still purportedly unable to provide accurate crime data, blaming the situation on the attack.
In a prior statement to The Dallas Express, the City said it was continuing to “investigate and address the cybersecurity incident.”
“We continue working diligently to restore full functionality as quickly as possible and will continue to keep the community informed with relevant updates throughout this process,” the statement read.