Title
Staff Report for a Resolution of the City Council for the City of San Leandro to Approve a Consulting Services Agreement with ConvergeOne for Cisco Next-Generation Firewall Installation, and to Make a Finding for a Sole Source Procurement of Cisco products
Staffreport
SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Staff recommends that the City Council approve a resolution authorizing the City Manager to execute an agreement with ConvergeOne to install and configure upgraded Cisco firewall technology. Staff also recommends that the City Council make a finding for a sole source procurement of Cisco products. The contract is valued at a not-to-exceed amount of $104,000.00.
BACKGROUND
The City of San Leandro's network firewall infrastructure, which currently uses Cisco ASA firewalls, lacks features such as intrusion detection and prevention, as well as redundancy (the City does not have two identical firewalls in place), making the system vulnerable to attack and hardware failure. This project will install redundant Cisco Firepower 2140 Next-Generation firewalls enabling new threat defense systems and protection from hardware failure.
Analysis
The City's current firewall technology is based on Cisco's flagship ASA firewall system. Traditional firewalls such as the Cisco ASA work by blocking or allowing network and internet traffic based on a set of rules established by the network administrator (i.e., IT Division). For many years this technology has been the gold standard in network firewall defense.
However, in recent years, new cyber threats to enterprise and municipal networks have evolved. In the most extreme example, the City of Atlanta was attacked by a ransomware virus that took down nearly 1/3 of City services, including core functions like police and courts. City officials now estimate it may cost more than $9.5 million to fully recover from the attack.
While there is no way to 100% secure a network from being attacked, new technologies have been developed...
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