Mitch Perry
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday urged all Floridians who are customers of Anthem to take extra measures in monitoring their credit. The company, one of the nation’s largest health care insurers, stored the Social Security numbers of 80 million customers without encrypting them. Hackers then broke into their database, the largest-ever computer breach disclosed by a health care company.
“All Floridians who received references or services from physicians affiliated with Anthem or Amerigroup in the last five years are advised to review their credit reports and accounts for possible unauthorized activity,” Bondi said in a prepared statement.
Similar breaches have occurred during the past couple of years at Sony Pictures, Home Depot and Target, which is why Justice Department officials say that more than ever, institutions like the Florida Center for Cybersecurity at USF are necessary for our national security, economic prosperity and public safety.
On Friday morning the center had its official ribbon-cutting grand opening, on the seventh floor of the Tampa campus Interdisciplinary Science Building. In addition to U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and U.S. Rep. David Jolly, former and current Tampa Bay area state representatives Will Weatherford, Seth McKeel, Shawn Harrison and Danny Burgess also attended. University officials took special attention to give them credit because the Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott appropriated $5 million to USF in this year’s current budget to support the first phase of the center’s operations and other new cyber-security initiatives.
“We’re bringing the best minds together to train a world-class cybersecurity workforce and to conduct important research to make sure this threat does not go unchecked,” USF President Judy Genshaft said. “Our personal security, our financial security, our national security depend on the training and research being done here today.”
This past fall, USF launched its first-of-its-kind online master’s degree in cybersecurity with four concentrations. USF has also entered into partnerships with cybersecurity companies, military partners, business leaders and research entities across the country.
According to Nelson, “The business community has been asleep at the switch,” when it comes to dealing with cybersecurity. He says companies are reluctant to report such attacks because it’s bad for their image. He supports federal legislation that will cause reports of such attacks to be instantly fed into one portal inside the Department of Homeland Security, thus allowing all relevant agencies to be able to work on the problem.
One of the private partners who helped in the creation of this Cybercenter was Raymond James Financial Inc. Andy Zolper, Chief Information Security Officer for Raymond James, said the country is in the “infancy” of its mission to combat cybersecurity issues.
“Consider that in the next 24 months more technological computing power will be created than has been created in all of human history up to this point,” Zolper said. “The challenge around cybersecurity is just dawning for us.”
