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Representatives from Acom presented an update on the progress of the cabling and security project at the courthouse during the Chambers County commission meeting on Monday. 

In January, the county commission put out a bid for fiber optic cables to provide communication between the courthouse and the new Law Office across the street on South LaFayette Street. 

Acom Integrated Solutions is a cabling and IT services company based in Opelika. The company gave a quote for $29,616.33 to work on cabling and IT protection. The quote included networking, structured cabling, power and surge protection.

According to the representatives, the company has nearly completed installing the data cabling and foam cabling for the courthouse buildings. 

There are a couple more runs in the Sheriff’s patrol area that need to be run through to the highway and other areas in the county. After that, Acom will begin the process for the fiber backbone. 

The cutover onto the new lines will be scheduled so that there will be no interruptions to services, according to the Acom representatives. 

Acom is also looking into the telephone services in the courthouse for possible cost savings. The staff has begun the initial analysis of the county’s Verizon bill to compare with other hosting providers. The goal is to reduce the overall cost per month. 

The next steps will be setting up Project Planning meetings with each of the department heads in the county. During the meetings, department heads will discuss any anticipated challenges ahead of the project, resources they may need and areas where Acom can improve its response time. 

The department heads and Acom representatives will plan for the next 12 months, 24 months and 36 months ahead so that they can present a project budget for the following year. 

Acom is also in the process of rolling out all of its compliance tools and will be doing penetration testing. This testing is to evaluate the county’s network and pinpoint any holes in the network protection.

Council member Debra Riley asked about checking work emails from her personal computer at home. This is an example of a situation that Acom will be testing to find and address any possible holes in the county’s protection.