I want to open this month’s newsletter with a heartfelt THANK YOU to those in the Florida legislature and our community who have worked tirelessly to secure funding for BRIDG! Your support has been absolutely essential since the very beginning. BRIDG and the economic impact that this project has already started to make in the state of Florida is only possible through continued investments in the operations and infrastructure of BRIDG.

This infrastructure could not be coming online at a more critical time to support our economic and national security needs. Throughout our journey, we have consistently warned that the security of our critical infrastructure depends not only on software protection layers, but also on the strength of the capabilities that are embedded in hardware itself—from weapons systems and traffic grids to banking infrastructure and utility networks, and more. On May 15, President Donald Trump echoed our concerns as he issued an executive order declaring a national emergency to protect the U.S. information and communications technology services supply chain. The following day, the Wall Street Journal published an article summarizing serious cybersecurity threats that impacted several high-profile companies within the span of a week. In each of these cases, cyber weapons exploited hardware and software vulnerabilities that recently surfaced in today’s cyber warzone—emphasizing the need to develop robust hardware and software protections as our nation’s 5G infrastructure gets deployed.

As most of our readers know, our Florida federal delegation has recognized this need and worked to allocate federal funds within the Department of Defense budgets to strengthen hardware-level security and create a multilayered defense against cybersecurity threats. We and the members of congress who have worked with us realize that the investments Florida has made in our facility positions BRIDG to provide unique solutions to some of the most difficult challenges presented by the overall ecosystem of the supply chain for components of critical infrastructure.

I hope that each of you takes pride in what the region has done to ready our state to contribute to a more cyber-secure world. From the great academic accomplishments in software cybersecurity made at the University of Central Florida and demonstrated by their Hack@UCF cyber defense champions, to the unique capabilities of the University of Florida’s Florida Institute for Cybersecurity Research, to the incredible infrastructure we have right here at BRIDG, Florida stands strong as we work to ensure a safer cyber experience for our future.

 

Chester Kennedy

CEO