The City of Richmond could soon be tapping a $662,249.16 encryption system contract to protect its database.
Council will be discussing the contract award at a Nov. 4 committee meeting.
Staff are recommending council to award the five-year contract to Eclipsys Solutions Inc. to design, install and configure the database encryption of Oracle and Microsoft city databases.
The encryption project will be completed in the first year of the contract with an estimated cost of $168,410.89 and an additional $493,838.27 in operating costs for the next four years.
This security enhancement comes in response to a security breach suffered by the city’s IT systems in June 2023. The city warned that residents’ personal information might have been accessed after perpetrators compromised Richmond’s email system.
Currently, the city operates and manages database technology provided by Oracle and Microsoft, supporting many “mission-critical enterprise applications and systems,” according to a staff report.
These systems serve approximately 2,500 employees and over 170,000 registered MyRichmond customers.
Although these databases are secured by physical data centre security, firewalls and cybersecurity software, the information stored in the databases and back-up files are not encrypted, stated the staff report.
“This would potentially allow a malicious party to gain access to the unencrypted database and or backup files,” the report stated.
Database encryption will ensure data can only be decrypted by authorized parties, preventing malicious parties from gaining access to the information, the report stated.
The city issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) on May 7 which closed on June 4 for the installation project of the encryption lasting one year, the supply of the security product and an additional four-year license extension of the product.
The first phase of the evaluation consisted of a proposal review of two organizations, those being Eclipsys Solutions Inc. and Syntronic R&D Canada.
Eclipsys’ initial financial proposal was $1,105,773.60 and achieved an evaluation score of 88.67 out of 100, compared to Syntronic’s $2,180,146.00 proposal with a score of 53.61.
After being chosen for outlining a comprehensive methodology that met the city’s technical requirements, Eclipsysprogressed to the second phase of evaluation. The company responded with a revised financial proposal of $662,249.16.
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