Hillsborough County

Hillsborough County is a local government entity serving over 1.4 million residents across west-central Florida, including the Tampa area. The county's cybersecurity operation defends the digital infrastructure behind a sprawling public administration that touches public safety, health care, water resources, and social services - all of which run on systems that need to stay online. The attack surface is broad: citizen-facing portals like At Your Service , which handles bill payments and service requests around the clock, sit alongside internal networks that support development services, animal services, and parks and recreation. The threat model for a county government of this scale centers on ransomware targeting critical public services, credential abuse against citizen data stores, and the persistent challenge of securing legacy systems that can't simply be swapped out. Security teams here aren't protecting a single product - they're responsible for the continuity of municipal operations that residents depend on daily, from water management to emergency response coordination. Founded in 1834, Hillsborough County operates 24/7 through its main information line and online portal, meaning any significant breach or downtime has immediate, visible impact on a large population. The work spans network defense, identity and access management, incident response, and compliance across the verticals that keep a modern county running. For anyone in cybersecurity looking to defend real infrastructure with real stakes, this is operational security at municipal scale.