HOULTON, Maine — The Houlton Police Department’s online connections and equipment will get a complete overhaul to provide a higher level of security for the department, said Houlton Police Chief Tim DeLuca.
The current network switches — composed of mismatched vendors and capabilities — have questionable reliability, are not secure and lead to performance bottlenecks, according to an analysis of the system by SJ Rollins Technologies in Brewer. The current firewall lacks intrusion detection prevention and there is no ability to log communication or control and moderate unwanted traffic.
The Houlton Town Council on Monday night approved up to $62,000 in American Rescue Plan Act Funding for the overhaul SJ Rollins will do. The project will cost a little more than $53,000.
As cyber crimes rise, police departments face increasing threats to their sensitive information on cases, victims, crimes and data from federal agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A few years ago, police departments around the nation experienced a rash of ransomware attacks. The Presque Isle Police Department was attacked by a cybergang at that time. The extortionists held the department’s data hostage while posting some police affidavits on the dark web as part of the breach.
“Some of the information we have has to be closely guarded,” DeLuca said. “Right now, if our internet goes down, we also lose our phone lines.”
The Houlton Police Department’s outdated system has internet switches that go down from time to time. Plus some of the higher tech information from the state and FBI is hard for the system to handle, DeLuca said.
The new system will bring the police department up to modern standards and improve the reliability and security of the network, SJ Rollins said. Additionally, it will establish a disaster recovery and backup plan to mitigate threats, reduce downtime in the event of a cyber attack or security breach and keep out unwanted traffic.
In response to Councilor Sue Tortello’s question during the council meeting about how the town selected SJ Rollins, Town Manager Marian Anderson said that the technology company completed the town’s $11,000 upgrade for Zoom equipment earlier this year, and has a level of security required by law for police departments.
The Criminal Justice Information Services Division of the FBI gives state, local and federal law enforcement and criminal justice agencies access to criminal justice information such as fingerprint records and criminal histories.
Because of that, law enforcement and other government agencies must ensure that their use of cloud services for the transmission, storage or processing of this information is in compliance with requirements for this protected information.
