Town Meeting unanimously approved a $25,000 warrant article to contract an outside review of the town and school cyber security practices for one year. Ways & Means Chair John Iler addressed the assembly on the importance of protecting the town’s IT systems.
“As you know cyber security has been a real issue,” said Iler. “A number of town’s have been held hostage by people taking over their systems.”
A vendor from the state bid list will review what Burlington is doing and make recommendations. Steve Morin, Chair of the Information System Security Advisory Committee (ISSAC), gave a run down.
“The town and schools have taken a strong step forward with the adoption of a cyber security policy. However cyber security protection requires that the policy be transformed into concrete action for attack, prevention and recovery,” stated Morin.
It is essential that every town and school department have an incident response plan, along with rehearsals of these plans in case of a cyber attack so response and recovery can be fast and effective .
“The funding provided by this warrant article will move all town entities forward in creating these plans and addressing gaps in current defense and recovery measures,” said Morin.
These practices are not only in case of cyber attack but can prevent data loss in the event of natural disasters or inadvertent deletion of data.
The town IT department and the department heads will be working with the cyber consultant a day-to-day basis. ISSAC will also work with them closely and follow up on action items. During the process the consultants may make recommendations on additional measures or changes to processes that could require further funding.
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