Knox County Chief Information Officer (CIO) Kyle Webb informed the Board of Commissioners during their July 8 meeting that the IT Department has completed the clerk of court's server migration and installed new computers in various offices.
"We have purchased a cloud-based backup solution," Webb said, according to the commissioner's meeting video. "So we're going to continue our current system of using backup tapes as our off-site and our emergency failover backup system. But those are being kind of phased out by the manufacturers, mostly because they sell you the system one time, and then they don't get recurring revenue streams. So they're trying to push everyone to cloud-based because they can charge you monthly."
Webb also addressed staffing challenges within the IT department. He said that interviews for an open IT support specialist position have been scheduled, but some candidates have not shown up or declined after receiving offers. One candidate confirmed their interview time but did not attend. Additional interviews are planned for this week.
Webb further explained that Knox County has begun implementing multifactor authentication (MFA) for employees accessing county email accounts. The county already uses MFA for computer access. Employees will only need to authenticate once if their computer is within a county building; however, those using laptops from new locations will need to undergo the authentication process.
Finally, Webb reported on hardware updates, noting that most of an initial order of 50 new computers by Mount Vernon has been installed. The remaining units are secondary systems slated for installation by October when Windows 10 support ends and Windows 11 becomes necessary for continued security updates.
