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San Antonio Planning New Cybersecurity Operations Center

City officials told local media they are exploring the capabilities and potential locations, hoping the new center will be more cost efficient than deploying a shared services concept.

San Antonio is planning to open a security operations center to guard its municipal IT infrastructure, according to a local news report.

The city’s center would be shared with CPS Energy, San Antonio Water System and VIA Metropolitan Transit, the hope being that having one center would be less expensive than taking a shared services approach. A specific location for the center has not been selected, but the report does note that officials are in the process of searching for a building, as well as looking into the exact capabilities it would have.

In addition to the round-the-clock cybersecurity center, officials with the city and the other agencies are also said to be exploring an information sharing and analysis organization for threat intelligence with the potential to mitigate the threats posed by malware. Other plans on the table for the center include using software with artificial intelligence to identify potential issues more quickly.

A number of cities have invested in protective 24/7 cybersecurity resources. What makes San Antonio's plans noteworthy is the partnership between utility companies and the city. San Antonio as a market has long been somewhat of a field leader in cybderdefense. San Antonio’s cyberindustry is decades old, and it has been studied as the model for other large-scale cybersecurity projects.

San Antonio CISO Patsy Boozer told the San Antonio Business Journal that the city is currently “still in the beginning stages considering a physical location.”