Amid ongoing cyber threats, one county moves toward a 24/7 operations center
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By
Chris Teale
The Universal Services department in Harris County, Texas, hopes to open the center in FY 2023, as attacks can come from anywhere, at any time.
With cyber threats striking at any time of the day or night, one county in Texas is looking to open a continuously operated security operations center so it can respond to cybersecurity incidents in real time.
Harris County, which includes the city of Houston, is looking to open the center in FY 2023, Kimma Wreh, an information security officer in the county’s Universal Services department, said during a webinar hosted by GCN.
“Sometimes we get alerts in the middle of the night, so having a team that will be working in different shifts is going to be really critical for us to be able to make key decisions and take action,” she said. “If something happens in the middle of night and we don't take action, time has passed, and we don't want to give the adversary more time. We need to be alert and take action immediately.”
Wreh said the new operations center, which is part of several technological initiatives in Harris County, will use artificial intelligence to help “dissect” information across the threat landscape, while freeing up staff’s time to focus on those issues that need immediate attention. The center has echoes of a statewide one set up in New York earlier this year, which helps share information and monitor ongoing threats.
Already, county cybersecurity staff members receive various threat alerts and use AI to help determine where threats may be coming from and which actions need to be taken, if any. Wreh said staff can see if hackers are coming from inside the United States or internationally and can quickly alert county departments if any action is required, from changing staff passwords to resetting or quarantining devices.
Those alerts and the soon-to-launch operations center are in addition to a robust cybersecurity training program for new and existing county employees, which is coordinated by Universal Services. The county also centrally updates devices with the latest software and antivirus protection. Wreh said that “training and awareness” is crucial for keeping infrastructure secure.
“That's where your data resides,” she said. “Those are your systems that you use for the day-to-day operations,” she said. “You want to have availability, confidentiality, and integrity of those systems.”
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic complicated the county’s cybersecurity posture, as thousands of employees began to work from home. But Wreh said the health emergency helped Universal Services further improve its cybersecurity for employees, even when they are all working remotely. Through the extensive use of virtual private networks, as well as encouraging robust password management, secured devices and internet network connections, Wreh said it has been a challenge, but it has helped the county become a more “digital workforce.”
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