HELENA – The city of Helena and Lewis and Clark County’s shared Information Technology and Services department will hold an assessment to check its cybersecurity status.
On Thursday, the Lewis and Clark County Commission approved a contract with LMG Security, a Missoula company. LMG will assess any vulnerabilities in the city and county’s internal network.
Art Pembroke, the IT&S director, said the review will focus on security threats from people accessing machines inside city and county offices. He said they have already worked on addressing vulnerabilities from people accessing the system remotely.
Pembroke said the assessment wasn’t prompted by any specific concerns. About a year ago, IT&S began a full-scale review of their services. One of the recommendations of that study was a security check from an outside company.
“We feel real confident at this point about our technology, cybersecurity and security actions overall,” he said. “But once again, getting this third-party assessment will help validate those things we’re doing well and will give us ideas for improvement potentially, on things that they may find that we can improve upon.”
Pembroke said this review will give them a baseline to determine how they can move forward. He said leaders plan to keep checking their security needs every one or two years.
Pembroke said cases where other local governments have faced cyberattacks are a good reminder of the need to be proactive.
“We don’t want to end up on the front page,” he said.
