Greene County Prosecutor pushes to beef up cybersecurity
Prosecutor Dan Patterson wants to start encrypting his office's emails, which regularly include sensitive information.
Greene County Prosecutor pushes to beef up cybersecurity Prosecutor Dan Patterson wants to start encrypting his office's emails, which regularly include sensitive information. Check out this story on news-leader.com: http://sgfnow.co/2eHQaP6
Alissa Zhu, DZHU@NEWS-LEADER.COM Published 4:43 p.m. CT Oct. 23, 2016
Dan Patterson(Photo: File photo)
Greene County Prosecutor Dan Patterson wants to start encrypting his office's emails.
"We want to limit exposure of a person's personal information to be out there for someone to steal and do something bad with," Patterson said.
The prosecutor's office regularly handles sensitive information from police reports and search warrants — and it makes sense to make sure it's secure over email, Patterson said.
Patterson's request to beef up cybersecurity in Greene County initially raised some concerns from Jess Kerr, the director of Information Systems.
Kerr met with Greene County Commissioners Wednesday morning to discuss an email from Patterson.
Kerr appeared annoyed that Patterson suggested it was Information Systems' responsibility to pay for encryption services.
"I don't mind paying for encryption for certain employees, but I don't know if it's necessary. It's never been done before," Kerr told commissioners.
Email encryption prevents messages from being read by people other than the intended recipients.
Kerr said he's "all for" increasing security measures, but was worried about the cost.
Encryption costs $1.46 a month for every user, which according to Kerr, would add up to a lot of money over time.
"We have to watch our finances at the county," Kerr told the News-Leader. "It may not seem like a lot of money, but if you've gone through what we've gone through in the past eight years, you understand that a little bit of money is a lot of money."
Patterson said 83 people work in his office and he is willing to pay for encryption out his own budget, if need be.
"We're going to move forward regardless," Patterson said.
Kerr told the News-Leader if Patterson pays for the encryption from the prosecutor's budget, then he has no issues with it.
This year, Greene County switched their email server to a Microsoft product, which has encryption capabilities — an option not available with the previous system, Patterson said.
"We want to take advantage of best practices and the system we now have in place," Patterson said.
Patterson said there's a push statewide to move all the prosecutor's offices to follow best practices, which includes encrypting emails.
Kerr said there has never been a security breach in Greene County's emails and his department tries to keep everything as secure as possible.
"It's just an ongoing battle — in this day and age, everything is online and cloud-based. Security is not just for government, it's for everybody," Kerr said.
Kerr said there are some "common sense" measures Greene County employees can use to protect sensitive information, such as using different passwords or encrypting documents they save.
"If we're going to beef up security, we should beef up security across the board," Kerr said.
Read or Share this story: http://sgfnow.co/2eHQaP6