Report: Three Florida areas vulnerable to cybersecurity threat

PHOTO COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) _ The Tampa-St. Petersburg area is the 10th most vulnerable metro area in the country to cybersecurity threats, and other Florida counties ranked in the top 10 as well.

The survey ranked Orlando-Daytona Beach as the ninth most vulnerable metro, West Palm Beach-Fort Pierce eighth and Jacksonville seventh. Las Vegas was ranked as the most vulnerable.

The Tampa Bay Times reports part of the heightened risk in Tampa comes from the area’s concentration of defense and financial services firms.

The survey was done by Coronet, a cybersecurity firm.

Using six months of data gathered within 55 media markets, Coronet says nearly 37,000 devices in the Tampa Bay area are using a non-original operating system. That’s 5 percent of the total, or 5,000 percent more than the national average.