A managed IT agreement for a village should say who answers the phone and when, what is monitored and patched, which security tools run on each computer, how often a technician comes on site, how staff are trained and what costs extra, so that nobody has to guess later what the village is paying for. Managed IT from Pace Systems includes a help desk Monday to Friday in business hours and 24/7 for managed IT clients, monitoring and patching, endpoint protection from CrowdStrike and Huntress, email protection, vulnerability scans and a technician on site on set days around Chicago.
Who answers the phone, and when?
Put the hours in the agreement, in words, because those are the hours the village can hold its provider to. Our help desk answers Monday to Friday in business hours, and around the clock for our managed IT clients, and every request is logged as a ticket in ConnectWise from the first call to the fix, so there’s a record of what was asked, when, and what was done.
Ask any provider the same three things: the hours, where the tickets are kept, and who the village clerk calls at 9 o’clock on a Saturday night.
What should the provider watch and patch?
It should cover every computer and server in the agreement. We monitor and patch the devices we look after and run endpoint detection and response on them with CrowdStrike and Huntress, and we also protect email, run a network operations center and deliver our managed detection and response with ConnectWise.
Vulnerability scans check the village’s network-linked devices and applications for known weaknesses, and when we run them, we rank the findings by their effect on the village’s work and give you a plan to fix them.
The agreement should name the security tools and say how often the scans run, so that the village can hold the provider to both.
How often should a technician come on site?
Some work needs a person in the building, such as a new employee’s desk to set up, a switch to replace or a printer in the clerk’s office that won’t print. For villages around Chicago, one of our technicians comes on site on set days, and a village farther away gets the help desk, the monitoring and the patching remotely, anywhere in the US.
If the village needs a person for more hours than that, our IT staffing places technicians and engineers who work at Pace or at the village’s offices, tracked by the hour.
What does Illinois require of a village’s staff?
Since January 1, 2023, Illinois law, in 20 ILCS 1375/5-30, has required every employee of a county or municipality to complete a cybersecurity training program each year, and the training must cover, at least, detecting phishing scams, preventing spyware infections and identity theft, and preventing and responding to data breaches.
The state’s technology department, DoIT, makes a program available to every county and municipality, and a municipality may write one instead. Our cybersecurity service includes security training for staff on phishing emails and passwords, and whichever provider you choose, ask whether its training covers all four of the statute’s topics and who keeps the record of which employees finished it.
Who answers for the village’s security?
A village may want one named person to answer for its security without hiring one, and in that case our Director of Information Security can serve as the village’s part-time security officer, alongside the help desk. That way one person keeps the plan from the vulnerability scans moving after the first report.
What usually costs extra?
Ask what the agreement leaves out, and get the answer in writing. We recommend asking about three things in particular: new hardware, projects such as a server replacement or an office move, and work on devices or at hours the agreement does not cover. Our quotes say what is and is not included, so the village knows before it signs.
We sell the hardware too, from HP, Dell, Lenovo, Apple and Microsoft, and we can image and tag it in our Naperville lab before it reaches the village hall.
Send us the number of staff and computers, the buildings and the hours the village keeps, and ask for a managed IT quote. Managed IT from Pace has the details of the service, and cities, villages and counties lists what else we do for local government, from video surveillance to the Pace Municipal Suite of software.
Questions
What hours does Pace’s help desk work?
Our help desk answers Monday to Friday in business hours, and 24/7 for managed IT clients, and every request becomes a ticket in ConnectWise from the first call to the fix.
Can Pace look after a village or a business outside Illinois?
Yes, we can do it remotely, because we run managed IT for clients anywhere in the US. Our on-site visits are on set days around Chicago.
Which security tools does Pace use?
We run endpoint detection and response with CrowdStrike and Huntress, protect email and scan networks for vulnerabilities, and our managed detection and response is delivered with ConnectWise from our network operations center.
Does Illinois require cybersecurity training for village employees?
Yes, Illinois law, in 20 ILCS 1375/5-30, requires every county and municipal employee to complete a cybersecurity training program each year, covering phishing, spyware, identity theft and data breaches. The state offers a program, or a municipality may write one.