Hillsborough County

Hillsborough County is a local government entity serving approximately 1.5 million residents across the Tampa Bay area in Florida. Founded in 1834, it delivers core public services - think public safety, infrastructure, utilities, and constituent-facing platforms - to one of the most populous counties in the southeastern United States. The threat model is broad: critical infrastructure (water, power, transportation), public safety comms, massive citizen data stores, and a sprawling network of endpoints across departments that don't always have uniform security hygiene. The cybersecurity surface area here is civic-scale. Defending county systems means protecting operational technology that keeps water treatment plants running, securing voter and constituent PII, hardening networks that connect law enforcement, fire rescue, and emergency management, and maintaining the integrity of public-facing digital services. The attack vectors are the same ones targeting any large enterprise - ransomware, phishing campaigns, supply chain compromises - but the stakes are measured in disrupted services to a million-plus people, not quarterly earnings. Security teams operating in this environment work across network defense, identity and access management, endpoint protection, incident response, and compliance with frameworks like CJIS and HIPAA. Tooling and architecture are shaped by the realities of public-sector procurement, legacy systems that can't be ripped and replaced overnight, and the need to support a workforce that spans field workers, office staff, and first responders. It's infrastructure security with real-world consequences, where the work directly impacts whether residents can access clean water, report emergencies, or trust their local government with their data.