Madison council hears Entiva briefing on cloud migration and cybersecurity upgrades

James Scott of Entiva told the Madison City Council that the company has completed a series of technology upgrades, including email and Teams migrations, firewall and VPN installs, and moving most servers into Microsoft's Azure cloud while keeping sensitive camera data on an on‑site server. "They have an on-prem server for their cameras," Scott said, noting that body-camera storage remains operationally on-premises in the police department.

The update emphasized cybersecurity measures the vendor has implemented and recommended. Aaron Taylor, Entiva’s technical account manager, described the city’s managed endpoint detection and response and a 24/7 security‑operations capability, and stressed the importance of multi‑factor authentication (MFA). "MFA... is that deadbolt to prevent people from just trying to bust the door down," Taylor said, urging a broad rollout across Microsoft 365 and VPN access.

Why this matters: the changes affect city email reliability, backup and disaster‑recovery capability, and the city’s cyber‑insurance posture. Entiva said some systems (for example police camera storage) remain on-premises for operational speed and local control, while other critical systems such as the UMS and domain controllers are now hosted in Azure with daily snapshots.

Entiva outlined next steps and near‑term projects: a planned UMS server upgrade (discussion ongoing with the utility department), airport network segmentation and Wi‑Fi for hangars, replacement of older Windows 10 machines that could not be upgraded to Windows 11, and an implementation plan to disable legacy authentication after a 30‑day log audit and controlled exception policies. For VPN MFA, Entiva advised using Duo (required by the Sophos firewall) and Microsoft Authenticator for Microsoft 365 logins; Entiva said the city already has the necessary licensing for conditional access policies.

Council members asked about training and response after phishing‑campaign failures; Entiva described a two‑part response — manager outreach and assignment of retraining modules — and committed to providing campaign statistics on request. Entiva also said the new contract will include a dedicated IT adviser, Mark Hartman, to assist with a 1–3 year IT roadmap, budget planning, and the city's cyber‑insurance application.

The mayor thanked the presenters and moved the meeting forward; no formal council action was taken on the technology presentation itself.

The council proceeded to other agenda items, including readings on the Unified Development Ordinance and the employee handbook.