The Village’s Information Technology (IT) network infrastructure interconnects all Village municipal buildings and provides a connection point to Northwest Central Dispatch Center, Cook County Sheriff's Office, Illinois State Police and the Internet.  The Village’s network is responsible for hosting over 1200 network enabled devices including computers, laptops, servers printers, etc. Additionally, the Village is a member of Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) program. The program is operated by Center for Internet Security (CIS) as a partnership with the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications in the United States Department of Homeland Security and serves as a key resource for cyber threat prevention, protection, response and recovery for the nation’s State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial governments. With the growing threat of cyber-attacks that occur with greater frequency and intensity, the Village is seeking to perform a Network Vulnerability Assessment/Network Penetration.  Such assessment has not been performed on the Village network and is an important action to take in the growing threat of ransomware malware and other cyber-attacks.

To ensure the Village network is properly secured and risk of being hacked is kept at minimum, IT is recommending to hire CIS to perform a Network Vulnerability Assessment/Network Penetration testing. The purpose of the assessment testing is to analyze the Village network environment systems for any weak points, uncover hidden cyber risk and reduce exposure to cyber threats. The Network Vulnerability Assessment/Network Penetration testing is broken down into two phases. The first phase will be completed by the end of Dec 2019 and the second phase in the Q1 2020. Funds are available and budgeted in 625-0601-553.20-05.

RECOMMENDATION

It is recommended that the Village Board award a waiver of bids and approve the Network Vulnerability Assessment/Network Penetration testing agreement with Center for Internet Security, East Greenbush, NY in the amount of $33,040 for both phases of the project.