City upgrades cyber insurance
Jun. 25—TRAVERSE CITY — The latest purchase for Traverse City has a $26,753 price tag and is something that city Clerk Benjamin Marentette said the city will hopefully never use.
That's the case for any insurance policy, he told city commissioners during a brief special meeting Monday. Buying the policy guarantees the city has better coverage than before to handle the aftermath of any future cyberattacks.
The timing was noteworthy — both city and Grand Traverse County networks were slowly coming online following a June 12 suspected ransomware attack. City Manager Liz Vogel said after the meeting that it's still in the works, but that a few city systems were back to normal.
Marentette said he was considering higher coverage for cyber liability months before the attack, though. The city currently has "modest" coverage through its overall insurance policy through Michigan Municipal League.
"So we found a policy that fits the city's needs, in my professional opinion, rather well," he said.
The new policy is through Northern Insurance Agency and ups the city's coverage to $2 million in aggregate.
That's on top of the city's $403,762 comprehensive liability and property insurance policy through MML, and a five-year pollution policy from Northern Insurance Agency for $79,792.50.
Commissioner Mi Stanley commended Marentette and his office for finding the policies, and wanted to know if the new cyber liability policy would be enough given what the city's been through in recent weeks.
Marentette responded yes, particularly since it will provide access to experts and "very expensive," specialized lawyers who can guide the city through any legal considerations following a cyberattack.
Commissioners also approved an emergency contract to deal with just that for the recent cyberattack. They confirmed Vogel's hire of firm McDonald Hopkins for an amount not to exceed $295 per hour, and no more than $50,000 in total.
The firm will guide the city through whatever data breach notification requirements it faces, as well as other legal issues resulting from the cyberattack, documents show.
That's how much the city's current policy will cover for the contract, Marentette said. He added he didn't expect the city's needs will come close to that.
Commissioners agreed to waive the competitive bidding process, with city Attorney Lauren Trible-Laucht adding the firm was on the city insurer's vetted list of those with cyber liability know-how.
Mayor Amy Shamroe said Monday's meeting took care of business that was delayed by the cyberattack, and Marentette said the insurance policy renewals are due by the end of the fiscal year, coming June 30.
"We had to retrace our steps in a clunky way because we didn't have access to the network," Marentette said.
The city and county share many networks, and county Administrator Nate Alger said he figured about 70 percent of county offices are back online. Internet connectivity is back, as is access to shared network storage. That was enough to get the county clerk's office completely back to normal, as it restored services not hosted on cloud-based systems.
Others are still in progress — while Vogel said the city's mapping system known as GIS is back online, Alger said the county's isn't just yet. Nor is the county treasurer's office, and several city departments that rely on BS&A software, Alger said. That program handles everything from bookkeeping to payroll to billing.
Another major move will take Grand Traverse County 911's computer-aided dispatch from in-house to cloud-based, Alger said. Tyler Technologies of Plano, Texas, is offering to expand services the company already provides to central dispatch, and county commissioners will consider the amended contract Wednesday.
Alger couldn't say when all systems would be back to normal.
"We really can't put a timeline on that, but it seems like we're making progress every day and we will continue to work to get back fully operational as soon as possible," he said.
