Cyber security and information technology were the subjects of discussion at this week's police services board meeting.
South Simcoe Police Service Insp. Henry Geoffroy provided an update on the Next Generation 911 (NG911) program used by the service and the Police Regionalized Information Data Entry (PRIDE) partnership of which the service is a part, during the board meeting Wednesday at the service’s South Division building in Bradford.
In terms of the NG911 program, Geoffroy said the PRIDE group just signed the contract with their selected vendor the week prior to the meeting, and the vendor is slated to start implementing infrastructure in the third quarter of 2023.
“We’re hoping by the first quarter of 2024 to actually have equipment in place with training happening in the first to second quarter for the NG911,” Geoffroy said.
In a media release from April of last year, the Ontario government said it is investing $208 million over three years to enhance the province’s 911 emergency response system, as part of a transition, which the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission has mandated to take place by March 4, 2025.
“Once fully implemented, the new system will make it easier to provide additional details about emergency situations such as video from the scene of an accident and to text 911 when requesting immediate help from police, fire or ambulance services. It will also give emergency operators and dispatchers the ability to identify the location of a call using GPS co-ordinates, resulting in a safer, faster and more informed emergency response,” the province said in the release.
Discussion of the program’s progress prompted Innisfil Mayor Lynn Dollin to ask if the service has cyber-security insurance, and once Chief John Van Dyke clarified that they did not, it prompted Chris Gariepy to ask if they should.
“We did look at it a few years ago, and it’s something we can look at, but it’s a lot of money and our insurance bill is already off the charts,” Van Dyke said.
He stressed that PRIDE takes security very seriously, and to those outside the worlds of policing and cyber security, the partnership’s efforts might even seem “freakishly paranoid.”
PRIDE is a system of shared information, expertise and resources between its member police services with common shared technology systems and infrastructure.
PRIDE was established in November of 1980 as a joint venture between Brantford Police Service, Guelph Police Service, Stratford Police Service, Waterloo Regional Police Service, and Fergus, before OPP took over policing Fergus in 1999. South Simcoe Police joined PRIDE in 2015.
Geoffroy explained that the current security protocols in place interrupt service members every 30 minutes while they perform data entry.
“I’m not a techy, I won’t claim to be one, but do I know it is probably one of the highest protocol systems in the province,” he said.
While PRIDE operates the mainframe and the servers for the service, Geoffroy said local police access the programs and services through secure remote access.
“Any software which we use independently, which is very little, has to be approved for the PRIDE network because if we have an infiltration it affects five police services. That’s why we have such a high-level protocol of security system,” he said.
Bradford Mayor James Leduc still had concerns over potential vulnerabilities in the service's local network, but Van Dyke assured him there was “nothing crucial” stored locally.
“Anything on premise is independent of the PRIDE network which is our core fundamental operating system. So our core fundamental operating system is isolated and protected by all five partners and that’s monitored 24/7,” Geoffroy said.
Gariepy suggested it might be better to refer the matter of cyber-security insurance to the PRIDE group, and Van Dyke seemed to agree.
“A lot of it is economy of scale based. It’s not all security, it’s buying power. Buying large servers for five agencies is much more cost effective than buying it for one,” he said.
Gariepy suggested having a separate report on cyber security for discussion at the next meeting.
During the capital updates, Deputy Chief Sheryl Sutton confirmed the service is starting to see some of their new computer equipment arriving, but are waiting for integration with PRIDE and the NG911 program.
In a similar vein, she said the e-ticketing program is also waiting for PRIDE to complete their final integration so tickets can be submitted directly to the court offices.
Geoffroy said he thinks that will happen this fall or next year.
