On 8 May, over sixty representatives from fourteen counties participated in an in-person TTX hosted by Cyber Florida at Hunter’s Green in Tampa. County Supervisors of Elections (SoEs), Law Enforcement (LE) personnel and those in Information Technology (IT) roles were joined by representatives from the FBI, Florida Digital Service (FLDS), the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the University of West Florida (UWF), and Florida International University (FIU) (two of Cyber Florida’s state training program partners) to address this critical topic. The FBI, CISA, and UWF spoke to the group about the importance of election security, how their organizations provide support, and how state and county officials can connect with them.

Following those informative presentations, Norwich University Applied Research Institute (NUARI) orchestrated a four-hour session using scenarios developed in concert with Cyber Florida, SoEs, and LE personnel. NUARI’s DECIDE tool virtually presented scenario events to the different sets of “players” in the room, who had to articulate how they would respond to the events. The advantages of holding the event in person became obvious as numerous discussions and networking occurred at every table and among the SoEs, LEs, and IT personnel throughout the day—organic discussions that could not be replicated in a strictly virtual environment.

Cyber Florida infused the new, state-funded cyber range (hosted by SimSpace) to provide a technical, hands-on dimension to the experience. IT personnel from three counties and University of South Florida students in Cyber Florida’s Security Operations Center Apprentice Program were confronted with various cyber events on the range. At the conclusion, IT participants were asked to share the events detected and actions taken. Notably, their presentations were clear and concise—even to those in non-technical roles—underscoring the importance of IT personnel being able to explain things in “plain English” to managers and executives who may need to take or authorize specific actions.

Feedback from participants included these comments:

• “We need to revise our Incident Response Plan to include many of the things we learned today.”
• “Learned a lot about resources available to us: CISA, FBI, Cyber Florida, FLDS and other state orgs.”
• “The opportunity to have in-person networking was great.”
• “The use of tech and opportunity to collaborate amongst many counties was great.”
• “We need to codify our processes and know our key POCs.”
• “We need more training events like this.”

Cyber Florida thanks the Pasco County SoE, Kristie Crump, and the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office (specifically Chuck Esposito), who contributed expertise and used their SoE and LE networks to help us garner the support and participation of other counties.

Cyber Florida is working with FIU to co-host another in-person TTX in the Miami area in August and will endeavor to host one in the Jacksonville area in September. As we do this, we will also need support from SoE and LE personnel in those parts of the state.