Indian River County - Friday March 10, 2023: Florida Lt. Governor Jeanette Nunez was on the Muller Campus of Indian River State Collage Friday afternoon to announce the availability of $30 million dollars in competitive grant funding to equip local governments with cybersecurity capabilities.
The Florida Local Government Cybersecurity Grant program is intentionally designed to offer flexible options to meet the cybersecurity threats faced by local governments statewide.
"We're proud to make Indian River County our fourth stop on our statewide tour to announce our Florida Local Government Cybersecurity Grant," said Lt. Gov Nunez. "This $30-million dollar grant program will be a tremendous for our local Governments and equip them with a whole suite of support services." Those support services include email security detection, end-point-detection and 24-7 monitoring services.
There have already been 56 applications from 32 counties. The application deadline is March 31. Local government officials are encouraged to download the sample application and apply for the funding.
Learn more about the grant program and download an application here: https://cybergrants.fl.gov/cybergrant/.
In addition, in recognition of the shortage of trained cybersecurity employees, Nunez also pointed out that last year, the DeSantis administration dedicated $15.6-million to expand cybersecurity training and a different $30-million initiative to support workforce development.
Indian River College has already taken advantage of that funding and IRSC President Dr. Timothy Moore, thanked Lt. Gov. Nunez and the DeSantis Administration for their support.
"We're very thankful to the Governor and the Lt. Governor for their leadership," said Dr. Moore. " The $1-million dollar cybersecurity workforce training grant will be put to work very quickly. "
Dr. Moore also said that Indian River State College is now working with the Governor to secure over 200 acres in Okeechobee County to set up the largest and newest data center in the state.
"Because we trained them, we want to give them a place to work," said Dr. Moore. "Because this all about a j-o-b at the end of the journey, a job, a high paying job, a job we want to stay right here in the state of Florida."