Tampa, Florida looks to become national cyber hub
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The city will host the CyberBay summit later this year, and is looking to use its military background as well as the University of South Florida to become a leader on cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity experts are working to create a national cybersecurity hub in Tampa, Florida.
Calling it CyberBay, leaders in education, business and the military are joining together to introduce the concept at the CyberBay 2025 summit Oct. 13-15. It will showcase ways the region on the Sunshine State’s west coast is already making a splash in the technology industry.
“The CyberBay vision was born from the recognition that cybersecurity is now national security, and America needs a regional center to lead this change,” said Arnie Bellini, a tech entrepreneur who’s been instrumental in driving the industry to the area.
In 1982, he founded software company ConnectWise in the city. He sold it for $1.5 billion in 2019, making it the first tech unicorn in the area.
Today, more than 25% of Florida’s tech jobs are based in Tampa, and the number of tech workers there has grown from about 47,000 in 2019 to a projected 59,000 this year, according to the CompTIA State of the Tech Workforce 2025 report. It’s the headquarters for multimillion- and multibillion-dollar giants such as ReliaQuest, Rapid7 and ConnectSecure. Their presence is a pillar of the CyberBay concept.
Another key driver is the University of South Florida, a public school in Tampa that has recently increased its commitment to cybersecurity education. In June 2023, it joined the Association of American Universities, a prestigious group of research schools in North America, and in March, it announced a $40 million gift from Bellini and his wife, Lauren, to establish the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing.
The largest investment in the university’s 70-year history, it creates the first named college in the country dedicated to AI and cyber. The school will open this fall with at least 3,000 students enrolled and a $268,000 award from the National Science Foundation for a collaborative research project to increase hands-on learning in hardware security.
“We’re going to be pumping out great talent into the Tampa Bay area,” said Bellini, who is managing partner at Bellini Capital, a venture capital firm. “We’ll also be taking on amazing research and development projects from that business community that’s already been here, that's growing very quickly here. We’ll have that virtuous cycle of talent going out there, research coming in and research going out. It’s going to be this great ecosystem.”
A significant military presence also makes CyberBay an attractive proposition. Tampa is the country’s only city with two combat and command military headquarters: U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command.
“The density of military applications of cyber, the density of partnerships that you can achieve with the Department of Defense because of that is quite intriguing,” said Gen. Frank McKenzie, who retired in April 2022 as the 14th commander of Central Command. Now he is the executive director of the Florida Center for Cybersecurity and of the Global and National Security Institute, both part of USF.
Plus, the college and university at large will be instrumental in continuous cybersecurity education, McKenzie added.
“The thing about this industry is you graduate with a computer science degree… but in a year, much of what you know is dated because of the fast-moving nature of cyber, and particularly cybersecurity,” he said. “What institutions like the University of South Florida are going to do is continue to provide academic service for the dynamic changes that are occurring in that environment. That means certificates, that means other kinds of programs that are not necessarily ultimately degree-granted.”
The three-day summit will be a showcase of what’s already happening in Tampa and what’s possible. The agenda will focus on cybersecurity, AI, national security, talent recruitment, and research and development.
“The role of the summit is to bring national attention to the need to protect our digital borders,” Bellini said. “The goal of CyberBay is to make cybersecurity ubiquitous throughout the United States of America. And so that means, every business, every agency, every organization in the United States has to be protected.”
The event will also include a capture-the-flag competition and an AI and Cyber Talent Showcase for graduating students and job seekers to connect with Tampa tech companies.
“We could never be Silicon Valley, but we can borrow some pages from their playbook,” Bellini said of Tampa Bay. “I saw what worked there. [I thought,] ‘Let me just do that here.’ And so we’re really in that process. How do we get enough tech talent in the area? Once you have enough tech talent, that draws in more tech talent, that draws in more companies, that draws investors, and so all the pieces of an ecosystem for technology start to appear.”