LEE COUNTY, Fla. — Florida Lt. Governor Jeanette Nunez said Wednesday that every day, the state recognizes it is more susceptible to cyberattacks. As a result, the state has set aside $40 million this year to help communities fight off hackers.
Nunez was on Sanibel Island to announce the city, along with the Lee County Property Appraisers office, would be receiving cybersecurity equipment to be paid for with state tax dollars in order to help keep resident’s data safe.
The news comes at a good time for Sanibel as the city builds back after the devastation of Hurricane Ian.
One thing the storm didn’t touch was private information because of the efforts the city took before the storm to get much of that data stored in the cloud.
“They were prepared for this. They were ready for something like this,” said Sanibel Mayor Richard Johnson.
Johnson said the city was very busy relocating its servers off the island to a secure location, pointing out that much of the data has been transferred to the cloud.
Now, the state is stepping in to help ensure the data is kept safe.
“We want to continue to bolster cybersecurity infrastructure in particular leading up to, during and following a natural disaster like a hurricane,” Nunez explained.
She announced the state will use grant money to upgrade the city’s security.
“The bad guys change and adapt so that they can infiltrate into our systems and get by those protections,” Mayor Johnson stressed.
The Lee County Property Appraiser Matt Caldwell will also be getting new cybersecurity software from the state and welcomed the added security.
“People really don’t rob banks anymore. They steal your identity. They try to steal the information and use that and hold it hostage or in a fraudulent way,” Caldwell said.
Lee County was hit by cyber criminals in 2019. That forced the county to shut down its entire website.
The new software is aimed at preventing that.
State Representative Mike Giallombardo said the grant money allows local governments to buy systems they would never be allowed to afford on their own.
The state wants to broaden these cybersecurity grants and open them to school districts as well.