Tampa, Florida · Cybersecurity, compliance and GRC for businesses that cannot afford a bad week

Tampa prepares for storms. The one that empties the account gives no warning cone.

A SOCOM subcontractor in Ybor, a three-store retailer in Hyde Park, an advisory firm in Westshore, a dental group in Wesley Chapel: Tampa Bay businesses know how to sandbag for a hurricane. The attack that reroutes payroll arrives with no forecast. We watch for it around the clock, with an engineer who answers, so the Howard Frankland at rush hour is the worst part of your week.

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Chicago-based, serving Tampa BayEngineer on site for practicesPublic pricingStaff training included

Serving Westshore, Downtown and Water Street, Hyde Park, Ybor City, Carrollwood, Brandon, Wesley Chapel and St. Petersburg. Remote first, on site when it matters.

A Tampa story

The Tuesday the processor called about the Hyde Park store

the owner of a three-store home-goods retailer with shops in Hyde Park, Carrollwood and downtown St. Petersburg

It is a Tuesday in October, a storm sitting in the Gulf that may or may not turn, and the owner of a three-store home-goods retailer is at the Hyde Park shop moving inventory off the floor in case it floods. Her card terminals run through a back-office computer in each store. Her point-of-sale vendor installed a remote-support tool on all three so they can fix things without driving across the Howard Frankland.

The remote tool still uses the password the vendor set on install day. Someone in another country runs a program that tries that password against thousands of stores an hour. In September it worked on Hyde Park. Since then a small piece of software has copied each card as it was swiped.

The owner does not know any of this. What she knows on Tuesday is that the sandbags are in place and the register is running. The processor's fraud team knows something else.

At 11:20 a.m. the processor calls to say that forty cards used at the Hyde Park store last month have since been used for fraud in three other states, and her store is the one thing they have in common.

What changes the ending

Default passwords changed, and remote-support tools locked to the vendor's addresses and switched on only while a ticket is open (CIS 4 Secure Configuration of Enterprise Assets and Software)
Card terminals on their own network segment, away from the back-office PC that reads email, so one wrong click cannot reach a swipe (CIS 12 Network Infrastructure Management)
The point-of-sale vendor's access reviewed, written down and monitored like any other login, because the 2026 DBIR found 68% of retail breaches involve a third party (CIS 15 Service Provider Management)

What price are you willing to pay to let ten years of building go away because someone overseas tricked one person on your team into clicking a link? You would not skip the shutters for a Category 3, and this storm comes without a cone. We would rather you take the week in the Keys you earned, and drive back over the Skyway to find payroll still there.

Sam Khan, founder. The Cyber Expert in times of peace.

Florida, by the numbers

What the FBI, the state and the researchers counted, not what a vendor guessed.

$1,596.1M

lost by Florida victims across 71,845 complaints to the FBI in one year, third in the nation

Source: FBI IC3 2025 Annual Report, Florida state page (2026)

1.2 million

Tampa General Hospital patients whose names, Social Security numbers and treatment information were stolen in one 2023 intrusion; a $6.8 million settlement followed

Source: FOX 13 Tampa Bay (2023) and HIPAA Journal (2025)

68%

of retail breaches involve a third party such as a payment or point-of-sale vendor

Source: Verizon 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report

The law and its clock

Florida Information Protection Act (Fla. Stat. 501.171)

Notify affected individuals as expeditiously as practicable and no later than 30 days after determining a breach, with one 15-day extension for good cause. Notify the Department of Legal Affairs within 30 days for any breach affecting 500 or more Floridians, and the consumer reporting agencies when more than 1,000 are affected. Third-party agents must tell the covered entity within 10 days. Civil penalties for late notice reach $500,000 per breach.

Regulator: Florida Attorney General (Department of Legal Affairs) · source

Florida Digital Bill of Rights (Fla. Stat. 501.701-501.722)

In force since July 2024. The controller definition reaches companies with more than $1 billion in global revenue that also meet an advertising, smart-speaker or app-store test, so most local businesses sit outside it, though the sensitive-data consent and children's provisions have broader reach. Florida has no enacted cybersecurity safe harbor; the 2024 bill was vetoed.

Regulator: Florida Attorney General · source

The regulator has the final say. We help interpret, scope and get you ready; we do not certify.

It happened here

Tampa General Hospital reported that attackers stole files with names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and treatment information of about 1.2 million patients; a $6.8 million class settlement followed.

May 2023 · FOX 13 Tampa Bay

Across the state, the City of Fort Lauderdale paid $1.2 million to a scammer posing as its police-headquarters contractor after a fake invoice by email; the money was recovered months later.

September 2023 · CBS News Miami

We list public incidents to show the pattern, never to shame a victim. Any of them could be any of us.

Who we protect in Tampa

Same controls, told from where it hurts for your business.

Medical and dental practices

Tampa General lost 1.2 million records and paid $6.8 million to settle. What does one lost laptop cost my four-dentist practice in Brandon?

The practice server and each workstation watched around the clock, laptops encrypted, backups that restore, and a HIPAA risk analysis done on site.

Tampa General, Moffitt, BayCare, AdventHealth and USF Health anchor a dense physician, dental and outpatient base across Hillsborough and Pinellas (research desk, 2026); Florida has 12,252 active dentists (KFF, 2024).

How we protect medical and dental practices →

MacDill, SOCOM and CENTCOM contractors

We are a 30-person subcontractor on a SOCOM task order. The prime wants our SSP and SPRS score by the end of the month. What do we send?

An honest NIST 800-171 score, a system security plan and the controls kept running between assessments, so the next task order is not the one you lose.

MacDill Air Force Base hosts U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command, and Florida's defense industry supports 865,937 jobs and $102.6 billion in economic impact, about 7.3% of the state economy (FloridaCommerce, 2024 analysis).

How we protect macdill, socom and centcom contractors →

Retailers and restaurants

Our point-of-sale vendor has remote access to all three stores. If they get breached, is it our breach?

Card terminals on their own network, vendor remote access locked down and logged, default passwords gone, and monitoring that catches a foreign login before the processor calls you.

The 2026 DBIR found 68% of retail breaches involve a third party such as a payment or point-of-sale vendor, and 42% start with an exploited flaw.

How we protect retailers and restaurants →

Financial advisors, RIAs and insurance offices

Between the FTC Safeguards Rule and the SEC's Reg S-P, what does a 12-person advisory firm in Westshore actually have to have in place?

A written security program that fits your size, client files encrypted and access-controlled, multi-factor authentication on email, and the monitoring that turns the rule from a binder into something that runs.

Raymond James in St. Petersburg and the back-office and insurance operations in Westshore anchor a large base of independent RIAs and CPA firms (Tampa Bay EDC target industries), and the 2026 DBIR counted 3,809 incidents in financial services, the most of any sector.

How we protect financial advisors, rias and insurance offices →

Hotels, restaurants and tourism

Gasparilla weekend is our biggest week. If the reservation system goes down on Friday, who fixes it at 11 p.m.?

Reservation and card systems separated from the front-desk PC, vendor access locked down, backups that restore, and an engineer who answers on a Friday night.

Tourism and hospitality is one of Tampa Bay's core sectors (research desk, 2026), and the 2026 DBIR found 68% of retail-pattern breaches involve a third party.

How we protect hotels, restaurants and tourism →

Medical, dental and other healthcare practices

In Tampa an AccuSights cybersecurity engineer comes to the practice, from South Tampa to Wesley Chapel and across the bay to St. Petersburg, and sets up the critical controls and the protection agent the same week.

The critical security controls set up in the office, the protection agent on every workstation and the server, the staff trained the same week, and a HIPAA risk analysis that holds up. We work at your speed and we do not bill you per module.

Defense suppliers: MacDill Air Force Base at the tip of South Tampa is home to U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command, and SOFWERX in Ybor City is where SOCOM meets small business. That mission creates one of Florida's densest clusters of intelligence, IT, training and logistics subcontractors handling CUI. We get a subcontractor to a true NIST 800-171 score and a system security plan, and keep the controls running, because the DoD paused the assessment mandate in July 2026 but the primes did not pause their questionnaires.

Your staff, trained and scored

It is fine to skip the new Nigerian prince's email. Next time, press the report button too.

Your analysts near MacDill and your cashiers in Carrollwood get the same short monthly training, built around the lures hitting Florida inboxes and phones this month, and each person is scored so you know who needs a hand. The report button sits in the mail client; one press protects all three stores. We do not charge per module or per test.

Short monthly training tied to the threats we are seeing this month, not a yearly video.
Scored per person and per team, so you know who needs a hand and nobody gets nickel-and-dimed for a module.
Phishing tests that teach the report habit; one report protects the whole company.

Enterprise-grade software, engineers who did this for the largest institutions, and a team that actually picks up the phone. We built this for the institutions that spend the most. We run it for you because we care about what you built.

What we do for a Tampa business

Assess it, keep it compliant, protect it around the clock.

Assess

Cybersecurity and Data Protection Assessment (CDPA)

Where the money, the records and the drawings actually live, what would stop the business, and the ten fixes that matter first. Scored against the CIS Controls and whatever rules apply to you.

Details →

Comply

Compliance, kept current

HIPAA, CMMC, SOC 2, PCI, the FTC Safeguards Rule, state privacy law: one control set, evidence produced once, ready the day a regulator, a prime or a customer asks.

Details →

Protect

24/7 protection for every employee, endpoint, server and website

An AI security agent that contains a threat in seconds and a named human engineer who watches it, day and night. Think of it as a per-employee service, like payroll, except that cutting this corner is the one that can empty the account.

Details →

Or start with the 3-minute test

Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC), simplified

The discipline the largest institutions run, sized for a business that cannot hire a department for it.

Governance, Risk and Compliance is how a bank or a hospital system decides what to protect, proves it is protected, and shows a regulator the evidence. We ran it for those institutions. We now run it for the 30-person supplier, the medical practice and the defense subcontractor, because that is where the supply chain is thinnest and where a breach does the most damage, sometimes to more than one company.

Governance

Who owns security, which policies are real, and what the owner signs. One page, not a binder.

Risk

What could stop the business, ranked by likelihood and cost, refreshed as the threats change, not once a year.

Compliance

The evidence a regulator, a prime contractor or a customer asks for, produced once and kept current every day.

A defense contractor with 40 people is a link in a national supply chain. A breach there is not a small-business story; it is a national-security one. The same is true, at a smaller scale, for the accounting firm that holds 900 client returns and the clinic that holds 12,000 patient records.

Questions Tampa owners ask

What people in Tampa search for, answered straight.

Which CMMC level does a SOCOM or CENTCOM subcontractor need?

If you only handle federal contract information, Level 1 and its 15 basic practices. If controlled unclassified information reaches you, and on most MacDill task orders it does, Level 2, which is the 110 controls of NIST 800-171. The DoD paused the third-party assessment mandate in July 2026; the primes did not pause their questionnaires.

What does Florida law require after a data breach?

The Florida Information Protection Act gives you 30 days from determining a breach to notify affected people, with one 15-day extension for good cause, and the Attorney General's office gets written notice within 30 days for any breach affecting 500 or more Floridians. Late notice can cost up to $500,000 per breach. Florida has no cybersecurity safe harbor; the 2024 bill was vetoed.

What does a small retailer have to do about PCI?

PCI DSS applies the moment you accept a card. For a small merchant it comes down to a self-assessment questionnaire and a short list of controls: change default passwords, keep the terminals off the network that reads email, patch the point-of-sale software, and know exactly what your vendor can reach remotely. The 2026 DBIR found 68% of retail breaches involve a third party.

Does my practice in Brandon or Wesley Chapel need a HIPAA risk analysis?

Yes. The HIPAA Security Rule requires a documented risk analysis for any practice that holds electronic patient records, and it is the first document an investigator asks for after a breach. We do it on site, alongside the controls, so it reflects the practice as it runs.

What do the FTC Safeguards Rule and Reg S-P require of a small advisory firm?

A written information security program with a named person responsible, a risk assessment, access controls, encryption, multi-factor authentication, monitoring, vendor oversight and an incident response plan, with Reg S-P adding a 30-day customer notice clock for SEC-registered advisers. We build the program to your size and run the monitoring so it stays true.

How much does a cybersecurity assessment cost in Tampa?

Our pricing is public on the site, and a 30-minute demo scopes it to your business. The Cyber and Data Protection Assessment is priced by size and by the rules that apply to you, CMMC, HIPAA, PCI, the Safeguards Rule or none. You get a scored report and the ten fixes that matter first.

Sources: FBI IC3 2025, Florida · Fla. Stat. 501.171 · Florida Digital Bill of Rights (SB 262) · Phelps on the vetoed safe harbor · Florida defense industry economic impact · Tampa Bay EDC · KFF active dentists · Verizon 2026 DBIR · FOX 13 on the Tampa General breach · HIPAA Journal on the Tampa General settlement · CBS Miami on the Fort Lauderdale fraud · MacDill Air Force Base · SOFWERX · FBI Tampa · CISA Region 4

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