Cloud Guardian provides managed IT services and cybersecurity to New Jersey municipalities, municipal utilities authorities, boards of education, fire districts, libraries, and county agencies. We respond to public RFPs, RFQs, and quote solicitations, maintain New Jersey business registration and required insurance, and deliver documentation suited to public records and audit review. Services include managed IT and help desk, cybersecurity assessment and remediation, network and cabling infrastructure, VoIP for municipal buildings, email and cloud migration, backup and continuity planning for critical municipal systems, and cyber insurance questionnaire support.
Why public IT is different
The constraints a private-sector provider tends to discover too late.
Procurement rules, not purchase orders
Thresholds, quote requirements, formal bids, and cooperative purchasing all change how work has to be packaged. A vendor who does not understand this either cannot be paid or puts the entity's award at risk. We scope work to fit the procurement path you actually have to use.
Everything is potentially public
Assessment findings, invoices, and correspondence can be subject to an OPRA request. Security documentation has to be written so that the sensitive technical detail is separable from the record, which is a discipline most providers have never had to apply.
Ransomware against essential services
Municipal ransomware is not an inconvenience, it stops tax collection, court operations, permitting, dispatch support, and utility billing. The recovery plan has to answer how the town operates while systems are rebuilt, and it has to be written before it is needed.
One IT person, or none
Many entities run on a single technician or a part-time contractor with no coverage, no documentation, and no succession plan. When that person is unavailable, nothing about the environment is known.
Cyber JIF requirements, town by town
New Jersey has more than 560 municipalities, and most of them are townships and boroughs with a clerk, an administrator and no IT department. For the majority that insure through a Municipal Excess Liability affiliated JIF, cyber coverage now runs through the New Jersey Cyber Risk Management Fund, the Cyber JIF, and with it comes a control program the entity is expected to meet, certify and keep evidence for. This is where most municipal IT engagements in the state now start, and we treat the fund's published framework as the specification.
The ten control areas the framework covers
From the fund's controls infographic. Every one is a control that has to be operating and documented, which is a different thing from a product that has been bought.
Asset management
An inventory of the physical technology, desktops and servers included.
Data management
An inventory of digital assets: software, sensitive data and employee data.
Account management
An inventory of user accounts and their access, with multi-factor authentication.
Vulnerability management
Vulnerability scans and documented patch management.
Logging
Activity tracked across the network so an incident can be researched.
Defense
Antivirus, antispam, firewalls and endpoint detection and response.
Hygiene
Employee training with periodic testing.
Third-party risk management
Vendors assessed for security risk and the contracts managed to match.
Policies
Every security practice documented, and an incident response plan implemented and tested.
Penetration testing
Annual testing once the other controls are in place.
How we read the program for a township
The framework assumes someone is there to run it. A borough with a part-time contractor gets the same list as a county. Our job is to be that someone: we check the current published framework at the start of the engagement, map each control to what the town actually runs, fix the gaps in risk order, fill in the fund's template incident response plan and technology policy for the entity, and hand the administrator a folder that answers the certification checklist line by line. The fund's free member services, awareness training with phishing simulation and an external vulnerability scan through its contracted vendor, are used rather than duplicated. When a claim happens, the deductible reduction checklist is answered from that same folder, and the fund's 24/7 Data Breach Hotline (1-855-566-4724) is called alongside, not instead of, the policy's notice requirement.
The 19 affiliated JIFs
Each fund has its own page: who belongs, its seat on the Cyber JIF board, and what the program asks of its members.
- Atlantic County JIFACM / ATL
- Bergen County JIFBER
- Burlington County JIFBURLCO
- Camden County JIFCAM
- Central Jersey JIFCNTRL
- First Responder JIFFRESP
- Gloucester, Salem, Cumberland JIFTRICO
- Mid Jersey JIFMID
- Monmouth County JIFMON
- Morris County JIFMOR
- NJ Public Housing Authority JIFNJPHA
- NJ Self Insurers JIFNJSI
- NJ Utility Authorities JIFNJUA
- Ocean County JIFOCE
- Professional Municipal Management JIFPMM
- Public Alliance Insurance Coverage FundPAIC
- South Bergen JIFSBER
- Suburban Metro JIFSBEX
- Suburban Municipal JIFSBMU
Program facts from cyberjif.org (home, About, Documents and Governance pages, the 2023 controls infographic and the 2026 Plan of Risk Management), read September 16, 2026. Membership, limits and deductibles are set by the fund and the affiliated JIF. Full program page: NJ Cyber JIF Readiness.
What we bring to a solicitation
Controls, not adjectives. Each of these is something we configure, document, and can show you evidence of.
- Complete, responsive submissionsWe answer what was asked, in the requested format, with every required form, certificate, and acknowledgment attached. Non-responsive submissions are the most common reason a good vendor gets disqualified.
- New Jersey registration and insuranceBusiness Registration Certificate, EIN, W-9, and current certificates of general liability, professional liability, and workers compensation, with additional insured endorsements on request.
- Public contracting compliancePay-to-play political contribution disclosure, non-collusion affidavit, Chapter 271 disclosure, EEO and affirmative action documentation, and Business Registration compliance for the entity's file.
- Scope written for the voteA clear statement of work, fixed and unit pricing, defined service levels, and a term structure a governing body can approve without amendment, plus references from comparable entities.
Why local government firms leave their old MSP.
Legacy providers price like it is 2014 because their stack is from 2014. We run a modern, automated, AI-assisted operation, which costs us less to deliver and costs you less to buy. Same room, better outcome, roughly half the invoice.
| Typical legacy MSP | Cloud Guardian | |
|---|---|---|
| Monitoring | Alerts nobody reads until you call them | AI triage that opens, correlates and often closes the ticket before you notice |
| Response | Tier 1 reading a script, escalation next business day | Senior engineer on the first touch, 24/7, no phone tree |
| Documentation | Lives in one technician's head | Written, versioned, and handed to you, you own it, not us |
| Tooling | The same RMM they bought in 2014 | Current EDR, current identity stack, current automation, reviewed quarterly |
| Billing | Per-seat minimums, 36-month lock-in, surprise project fees | No minimums, no long lock-in, scope and price in writing before work starts |
| AI | Not in the stack, and not in the roadmap | Used to cut ticket volume and audit every action, with logs you can read |
Why pick us on a public bid.
Send us the solicitation. We will tell you within one business day whether we intend to respond, and if we do, you get a complete and responsive submission rather than a brochure with a number on it.
We are the right size
Large integrators staff public accounts with whoever is available and price in their overhead. A single technician cannot cover a municipality. We are built for exactly the entities in between, and the person who wrote your proposal is the person who shows up.
Roughly half the cost, documented
Our delivery is automated and AI-assisted, so we carry far less labor per endpoint than a legacy provider. That difference goes into the price rather than into a margin, and we show the line items so a finance committee can verify it.
Local and onsite
Our office is at 643 Georges Rd in North Brunswick Township, Middlesex County. We drive to your building. There is no regional office three states away deciding whether your outage justifies a trip.
You own the documentation
Network diagrams, asset inventory, configuration records, and procedures are delivered to the entity and stay with the entity. If you ever replace us, the next vendor starts from a complete record instead of from scratch.
Cyber insurance answers
Municipal cyber policies now ask hard technical questions, and a wrong answer can void coverage. We complete the technical sections accurately and implement what the carrier requires rather than checking boxes.
Cooperative purchasing friendly
Where a cooperative or shared services path is available and appropriate, we will work through it. If a direct solicitation is required, we handle that too. The procurement route is your call, not an obstacle we push back on.
What we actually deliver
The services local government clients use most. Everything else we offer is available too.
- Managed IT ServicesProactive monitoring, patching, cloud management, and 24/7 support.
- Cybersecurity AuditFull internal and external vulnerability assessment with a prioritized fix list.
- Structured CablingCat6A and fiber, tested and certified to ANSI/TIA-568.
- VoIP Phone SystemsManaged cloud phones that follow your team between office, home, and road.
- Email & Cloud MigrationsGoogle Workspace, Microsoft 365, Exchange, and tenant to tenant moves.
- IT Cost ConsultingForensic audit of IT, cloud, and software spend to cut waste.
Questions we get from local government clients
What is the NJ Cyber JIF and does it apply to our township?
The New Jersey Cyber Risk Management Fund, the Cyber JIF, was launched by the Municipal Excess Liability JIF on January 1, 2023. If your municipality, authority, fire district or housing authority belongs to one of the 19 affiliated JIFs, your cyber coverage runs through it and the fund's cyber risk control program applies: a control framework, a certification checklist, template policies and a deductible reduction checklist.
Can you get us through the Cyber JIF certification checklist?
Yes. We assess against the current published framework, remediate the gaps, fill in the fund's template incident response plan and technology policy for your entity, and deliver an evidence file behind every line of the checklist. Renewal then becomes an update to that file rather than a scramble.
Do you respond to public RFPs and bids?
Yes. Send the solicitation and we will confirm within one business day whether we are bidding. We submit complete, responsive packages with every required form and certificate, in the format the specification asks for.
Are you registered and insured to work for a New Jersey public entity?
Yes. We maintain New Jersey business registration and carry general liability, professional liability, and workers compensation coverage, and we provide certificates with additional insured endorsements when required. We also supply pay-to-play, non-collusion, Chapter 271, and EEO documentation as part of a submission.
Can you present to a governing body or committee?
Yes. We attend council, board, and committee meetings, present the scope in plain language for a public audience, and answer questions on the record.
What kinds of public entities do you work with?
Municipalities, municipal utilities authorities, sewerage and water authorities, boards of education, fire districts, libraries, housing authorities, and county-level agencies.
How do you handle a ransomware incident at a municipality?
With a plan written in advance that assumes essential services must continue. That means a documented manual fallback for tax collection, permitting, and billing, tested restores with a known recovery time, defined notification and reporting steps, and a single accountable point of contact through the incident.
Can you work alongside our existing IT person?
Yes, and it is often the best structure. Your technician keeps day-to-day familiarity while we provide coverage, specialization, monitoring, security work, and documentation, which also solves the single-point-of-failure problem.
cGuard Security SuiteTM
Twice the quality. Half the price.
Book a free assessment. We audit your local government environment, show you exactly what is exposed, and quote what it should actually cost.