Pledging to fortify security measures while maintaining a user-friendly environment for employees and residents alike, Genesee County Information Technology Director Michael Burns on Wednesday updated Ways & Means Committee members on his department’s objectives for 2022.
“My goal for Genesee County is to not only support the infrastructure that we already have but do things that our employees see – to see what we’re doing – and doing things that the public sees … seeing that we do things the right way,” said Burns, who was hired in May 2021 after a 20-plus year career at Rochester Institute of Technology.
Burns said he doesn’t want IT to be a “barrier” to employees in the county’s 31 departments and agencies.
“IT is there to support what they want to do,” he said. “We don’t want to be the department of ‘no.’”
Burns, in his written report, outlined some of the things he’s looking to accomplish this year without (for security reasons) getting into too much detail:
- Integrate the Department of Social Services into the county’s IT structure, giving DSS employees the same permissions as county personnel.
- Continue to focus on cybersecurity as external threats continue to pose a significant risk to systems availability and data integrity. Use operating and grant funds to procure software/hardware that supports the inclusion of a cloud-based strategy, continued end-user training, system log reviews, vulnerability scanning, data classification and patch management.
- Continue to review and update data recovery solutions the county uses in case of natural disaster, computer virus or ransomware.
- Support departments’ staffing needs as staff may have to change to working remotely with very little warning. This includes the expanded use of video conferencing and the ability to connect from anywhere at any time, which creates the request for added laptops and phones.
- Review internal support processes and, where feasible and cost effective, enter into more managed services agreements that offload work from the in-house technical staff.
Previously: Batavia resident accepts Genesee County information technology director position after long career at RIT
