Today, I want to share information about criminal cyberactivity that took place and is currently under investigation. It’s my intent to provide the public with as much information as possible without compromising the integrity of the investigation. As someone who spent 35 years in law enforcement, I take all criminal activity seriously, and I consider an intrusion into an elections office an extremely serious offense.
We learned that an unauthorized user illegally accessed files on a shared drive on our network and we immediately notified federal, state and local law enforcement partners, including the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the FBI, MS-ISAC, the Florida Department of State, and the cybersecurity division of Hillsborough County’s Information and Innovation Office. We are working closely with those partners to ensure that this incident is thoroughly investigated.
It’s very important to note that the unauthorized user did not have access to our voter registration system or our ballot tabulation system. Our voter registration system has multiple layers of protection, monitoring and redundancy. Our tabulation system does too, and uses a stand-alone, air gapped server that is not connected to anything else. That server has not been compromised in any way.
Addressing this issue is my top priority right now, and I am proud to be working alongside law enforcement partners and cyber technology experts who understand and respect the seriousness of this incident.
I look forward to providing further information once the investigation concludes. Elections are critical infrastructure, and any attack on our office – even one that does not interfere with the conduct of an election – is an attack on our community and our democracy.
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