Tyrone upgrading computer security

Fri, 04/04/2008 - 3:16pm
By: John Thompson

The Tyrone Town Council Thursday night agreed that the town’s compute system needed a better security system.

Police Chief Brandon Perkins told the Town Council that he had been investigating several systems to protect the town’s records from a natural disaster, such as a tornado, or a man-made situation.

In evaluating systems, Perkins said he looked at different options including purchasing servers, but said that option was too expensive. Another option would be manual updates and storing the information off-site, but Perkins said that would use a lot of time.

Instead, Perkins recommended the town store its information online and recommended using the company ElephantDrive.com for online storage. According to amazon.com, the company was founded in 2005 and now uses Amazon’s Simple Storage as its storage solution.

Perkins said the software is easy to use and runs in the background on each computer. The initial price was $700 per year, but after the software was installed Perkins detected a flaw.

“Anybody could view another person’s files on their computer,” he said.

After Perkins contacted the company, the company fixed the issue and dropped the price to $499 a year. The service backups information on up to 20 computers, which Perkins said allows for the town to add a couple more computers on the system in the future.

The Town Council thanked Perkins for his work and agreed to pay for the system starting next year. Perkins said he had enough money in his budget to cover the cost this year.

In other news, the town deferred action on re-keying the administration building. Mayor Don Rehwaldt explained that it was discovered that the old library and town hall were on the same key system and he wanted to limit the number of people who had keys to the building. Rehwaldt said the town should use Best Key to re-key the buildings at a cost of just over $700.

But Councilwoman Grace Caldwell said the information provided to the council was not sufficient for her to vote on the proposal.

“Why don’t you just take the keys away from some people?” she said.

The Town Council agreed to wait until the next meeting to render a decision.

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promprinces's picture
Submitted by promprinces on Fri, 04/04/2008 - 5:18pm.

“Why don’t you just take the keys away from some people?” she said.

Why don't you start with Valerie's?


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