Ransomware Prevention: Lessons from Florida’s Public Sector

By William Beem, CISSP April 1, 2025

Ransomware prevention is crucial to protecting the security of your information and business assets. Implementing effective ransomware prevention measures can significantly reduce risk.

As a security professional with over two decades of experience in information security at organizations like Lockheed Martin, PwC, and Lucent Technologies, I’ve witnessed the evolution of cybersecurity threats firsthand. Today, I want to focus on one of the most persistent dangers facing organizations: ransomware attacks.

Recent Florida Ransomware Incidents

Florida’s public sector has become an unwitting laboratory for ransomware resilience, with several high-profile incidents offering valuable lessons for organizations everywhere. What makes Florida’s approach particularly instructive is its legal framework prohibiting ransom payments, forcing entities to prioritize prevention and recovery rather than capitulation.

Ransomware prevention tactics are essential for organizations to safeguard their data and operations. Understanding the importance of ransomware prevention can lead to more robust security strategies.

Florida Department of Health (July 2024)

In one of the most concerning incidents, the Florida Department of Health fell victim to a sophisticated attack by the ransomware group RansomHub. The attackers reportedly exfiltrated 100 gigabytes of sensitive data and subsequently published it on the dark web after the state refused to pay the demanded ransom, as required by Florida law.

The breach severely disrupted the department’s ability to issue birth and death certificates, creating widespread complications for citizens needing these vital documents. More alarmingly, the exposed data reportedly included highly sensitive personal and medical information.

OneBlood (July 2024)

Florida’s primary blood provider, OneBlood, experienced a ransomware attack that forced them to operate at significantly reduced capacity. The organization had to shift to manual operations for collecting, testing, and distributing blood to over 250 hospitals across multiple states.

While they worked with cybersecurity specialists on recovery, the impact rippled through the healthcare system, with hospitals implementing blood shortage protocols during an already challenging time.

Considering ransomware prevention as a priority can help organizations avoid costly breaches and ensure business continuity.

City of St. Cloud, Osceola County (March 2024)

The city of St. Cloud was targeted by ransomware attackers who locked digital files and demanded payment for their release. Municipal services were significantly disrupted, with many departments forced to accept only cash payments and operate with limited access to digital resources.

Instead of paying the ransom, the city leveraged state and local resources to respond to the attack while maintaining essential services like police and fire protection.

Sumter County Sheriff’s Office (August 2024)

Law enforcement agencies aren’t immune either. The Sumter County Sheriff’s Office experienced a ransomware attack that limited access to certain records. They quickly isolated their systems to prevent further infiltration while working with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Florida Digital Services to investigate and recover.

Florida’s No-Payment Policy: A Model Approach

Florida’s approach to ransomware is codified in law. A 2022 statute explicitly prohibits state agencies, counties, and municipalities from paying or otherwise complying with ransom demands. This hard-line stance aligns with federal guidelines and reflects several key principles:

1. Payments encourage more attacks: When organizations pay ransoms, it validates the criminal business model and funds future attacks.
2. Payment doesn’t guarantee data recovery: There’s no assurance that criminals will honor their promises to restore access or delete stolen data after receiving payment.
3. It funds criminal enterprises: Ransom payments directly finance organized crime groups, potentially supporting other illicit activities beyond cybercrime.
4. Organizations often face repeated attacks: Entities that pay are frequently targeted again, as they’ve demonstrated willingness to meet demands.

This policy necessitates robust prevention and recovery capabilities—a model that all organizations would be wise to adopt regardless of legal requirements.

Essential Ransomware Prevention Strategies

Drawing from these Florida incidents, here are practical prevention strategies every organization should implement:

1. Multi-layered Security Approach

Explore various ransomware prevention techniques to build a resilient infrastructure against cyber threats.

Regarding ransomware defense, I’ve learned that relying on any single security solution is like expecting a chain-link fence to stop a determined mosquito. You need multiple barriers working in concert. Next-generation firewalls serve as your first line of defense, examining traffic for malicious patterns that signature-based systems might miss. I’ve seen organizations avoid compromise simply because their firewall identified and blocked a novel attack variant before it reached internal systems.

Endpoint detection and response solutions provide critical visibility into what’s happening on individual devices. Think of these as security cameras monitoring activity inside your building after someone has made it past the perimeter. The best EDR tools don’t just alert you to suspicious activity—they can automatically isolate compromised machines before malware spreads across your network.

Email security deserves special attention since phishing remains the primary infection vector for ransomware. In my security practice, we’ve implemented advanced email filtering that catches thousands of malicious messages monthly. These solutions analyze everything from sender reputation to attachment behavior in sandboxed environments, stopping threats before they reach employee inboxes.

Network segmentation is another essential strategy that’s often overlooked. By dividing your network into isolated zones, you contain breaches to limited sections of your infrastructure. I’ve worked with healthcare organizations that successfully prevented ransomware from affecting patient care systems because their clinical networks were properly segmented from compromised administrative systems.

Finally, regular security assessments aren’t optional—they’re mandatory. External penetration testing reveals vulnerabilities in your defenses before attackers discover them. I recommend quarterly vulnerability scans and annual in-depth penetration tests focusing specifically on ransomware attack vectors. As the Florida Department of Health incident demonstrated, even sophisticated organizations can harbor unknown weaknesses.

2. Strict Access Control and Privilege Management

Throughout my career, I’ve observed that excessive access privileges represent one of the most significant internal threats to an organization’s security. The Fulton County, Georgia ransomware attack in early 2024 perfectly illustrates this risk—a single employee with elevated access rights clicked on something they shouldn’t have, giving attackers the foothold they needed to compromise core infrastructure components.

Implementing the principle of least privilege isn’t just a security best practice; it’s an essential defensive strategy. Users should only have access to the specific systems and data they need to perform their jobs—nothing more. During a security overhaul at a previous employer, we reduced administrative accounts by 72%, dramatically shrinking our attack surface with minimal operational impact.

Regular access rights reviews might seem tedious, but they’re crucial for maintaining security hygiene. People change roles, projects end, and temporary access often becomes permanent without proper oversight. I recommend quarterly reviews of high-privilege accounts and semi-annual reviews of standard user access. These reviews consistently uncover unnecessary permissions that could be exploited in an attack.

Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions provide an additional layer of control by justifying elevated access and implementing time-limited privileges. These systems also create detailed audit trails of administrative actions—invaluable for forensic analysis if a breach occurs. I’ve implemented PAM solutions that require approval workflows for sensitive system access, creating accountability and reducing the risk of privilege abuse.

Multi-factor authentication remains one of the most effective defenses against credential compromise. Even if a password is stolen through phishing or social engineering, MFA creates an additional barrier that most attackers can’t overcome. When I implemented mandatory MFA for all privileged accounts at a financial services client, attempted breaches dropped by over 80% in the first month alone.

One of the key aspects of ransomware prevention is educating employees on recognizing threats and avoiding risky behaviors.

Strong password policies complement these measures by making credential theft more difficult. However, focus on length over complexity—a 16-character passphrase is both more secure and easier to remember than an 8-character password with special characters. The organizations I’ve worked with that implement passphrases typically see fewer password reset requests and stronger overall authentication security.

3. Employee Security Awareness Training

Incorporating ransomware prevention into your overall cybersecurity strategy is vital for mitigating risks.

Despite our best technical defenses, humans remain the most exploitable vulnerability in any security system. Throughout my 20 years in information security, I’ve seen countless breaches that began with a single employee action. The technology landscape changes constantly, but human psychology remains remarkably consistent—and attackers know how to exploit it.

Regular security awareness training must be engaging to be effective. The traditional annual compliance slideshow doesn’t change behavior; it just checks a box. At Suburbia Labs, we’ve developed scenario-based training that places employees in realistic situations where they must make security decisions. These interactive sessions create memorable experiences that translate into better security practices when real threats emerge.

Simulated phishing exercises provide practical reinforcement of awareness training. When I implemented monthly phishing simulations at a healthcare organization, we saw a 64% reduction in click-through rates over six months. The key wasn’t punishing failures but using them as teachable moments. Each simulation targeted different vulnerabilities, from urgency-based tactics to curiosity triggers, helping employees recognize the full spectrum of phishing techniques.

Clear procedures for reporting suspicious activities transform your workforce from a vulnerability into a human sensor network. Make reporting easy and acknowledge those who flag potential threats. Employees with straightforward mechanisms to report suspicious emails or activities become your first line of defense against social engineering attacks. The most successful organizations create frictionless reporting processes and positively reinforce security-conscious behavior.

Fostering a security-aware culture requires leadership commitment and positive reinforcement. Security should be positioned as a shared responsibility that protects both the organization and its employees. I’ve found that explaining how security practices protect personal information and how these same skills can be applied at home significantly increases employee buy-in. Compliance improves dramatically when people understand the “why” behind security policies.

Specialized training for IT staff and administrators is essential since these teams have elevated access and responsibilities. Their training should include practical exercises in identifying and responding to ransomware precursors, understanding attack techniques, and implementing secure configurations. During tabletop exercises with IT teams, we’ve uncovered critical gaps in knowledge that, if exploited, could have facilitated successful attacks.

4. Robust Backup and Recovery Planning

If you take nothing else from this article, remember this: robust backup and recovery capabilities are your last line of defense against ransomware. When prevention fails—and eventually, it will—your recovery strategy determines whether you’re back in business in hours or weeks. The Florida incidents we’ve examined demonstrate that organizations with strong backup strategies fared much better than those without, especially given Florida’s legal prohibition on ransom payments.

The 3-2-1 backup rule has stood the test of time for good reason. Maintaining three copies of your data on two different media types with one copy stored off-site provides comprehensive protection against various failure scenarios. In my consulting work, I’ve helped organizations implement tiered backup strategies that apply this rule differently based on data criticality—ensuring resources are focused on the most essential systems.

Immutable or air-gapped backups have become essential in the current threat landscape. Modern ransomware specifically targets backup systems to prevent recovery. Immutable storage creates backup copies that cannot be altered or deleted, even by administrators, for a specified retention period. This approach ensures that attackers cannot compromise your ability to recover critical data even if attackers gain administrative access to your systems.

Regularly updating your ransomware prevention strategies is crucial as new threats emerge.

Regular testing of recovery procedures is where many organizations fall short. Having backups is meaningless if you can’t restore from them efficiently. I recommend quarterly recovery tests for critical systems and annual full-scale recovery exercises. These tests frequently reveal configuration issues, incomplete backup coverage, or procedural gaps that would have prevented successful recovery during an actual incident. One client discovered during testing that their database backup was complete but lacked the configuration files needed for rapid restoration—a gap they fixed before facing an actual attack.

Implementing a multi-faceted ransomware prevention approach enhances overall security posture.

Documented recovery processes with clear responsibilities eliminate confusion during high-stress incidents. Your recovery playbook should specify who makes decisions, who performs restoration tasks, and who handles communications. It should be detailed enough that someone unfamiliar with your environment could follow it if necessary. During my Lucent days, we developed recovery runbooks that proved invaluable during a significant outage, reducing recovery time by approximately 60% compared to ad-hoc approaches.

Calculating realistic recovery time objectives for each system forces meaningful discussions about business priorities and resource allocation. Not all systems can or should be recovered simultaneously, so business leaders must make informed decisions about acceptable downtime for different functions. These conversations often reveal unexpected dependencies between systems that can significantly alter recovery priorities and prevent potential business disruptions during recovery scenarios.

5. Incident Response Preparation

The chaos of a ransomware attack is precisely the wrong time to figure out your response strategy. As we saw in the Florida Department of Health incident, organizations that respond effectively during an attack’s critical first hours can significantly limit damage and accelerate recovery. Preparation makes the difference between a controlled response and a chaotic reaction.

Developing a comprehensive incident response plan specific to ransomware is essential. This plan should detail containment strategies, forensic procedures, recovery processes, and communication protocols. In my experience, the most effective organizations maintain modular IR plans for different attack types, allowing teams to quickly implement the appropriate response without wading through irrelevant procedures. Your plan should evolve regularly based on threat intelligence and lessons learned from your own and others’ incidents.

Establishing relationships with cybersecurity partners before an incident pays dividends when you’re under attack. These might include forensic specialists, threat intelligence providers, legal counsel experienced in cyber incidents, and public relations experts. Throughout my career, I’ve observed that organizations with pre-established partner relationships respond more effectively than those scrambling to find help during a crisis. One healthcare client reduced their incident response time by 40% simply because they had retainer agreements in place with key service providers.

Tabletop exercises involving both technical teams and executive leadership are invaluable for testing response capabilities. These exercises should simulate realistic scenarios based on current threat intelligence. I facilitate quarterly ransomware-specific exercises for clients that rotate through different attack scenarios—encryption of critical systems, data exfiltration threats, supply chain compromises, and others. These exercises consistently reveal gaps in procedures, communication channels, or decision-making authorities that can be addressed before a real incident.

Communication templates prepared in advance ensure consistent, accurate messaging during a crisis. These should include internal communications, customer notifications, regulatory disclosures, and media statements. During a ransomware incident at a previous employer, our pre-approved communication templates allowed us to notify stakeholders within two hours of detection—maintaining trust and meeting regulatory requirements despite the technical crisis unfolding.

Cyber insurance with specific ransomware coverage has become essential, but policies vary dramatically in their exclusions and requirements. Work closely with brokers specializing in cyber policies and understand the evolving threat landscape. In my consulting practice, I’ve reviewed numerous policies that contained exclusions or requirements that would have invalidated coverage during an actual incident. The best policies provide financial protection and access to incident response resources that complement your internal capabilities.

6. Vulnerability and Patch Management

Effective vulnerability management remains one of the most fundamental yet challenging aspects of cybersecurity. Many ransomware attacks, including several of the Florida incidents we’ve discussed, exploit known vulnerabilities that could have been patched months or even years earlier. The challenge isn’t knowing what to patch—it’s implementing a sustainable, comprehensive patching program that keeps pace with an ever-expanding attack surface.

A structured patching program requires clear policies, defined processes, and appropriate tooling. A risk-based approach categorizes systems by criticality and vulnerability exposure, ensuring limited resources focus on the highest-risk systems first. Organizations that implement this methodology can dramatically reduce their mean time to patch critical vulnerabilities, significantly minimizing their exposure window to potential attacks.

Prioritization is essential because not all vulnerabilities pose equal risk. I recommend a scoring system that considers not just the CVSS score but also threat intelligence about active exploitation, the presence of compensating controls, and business impact if the vulnerable system were compromised. One manufacturing client adjusted their prioritization model to account for operational technology vulnerabilities that conventional scoring systems underrated, preventing potential safety incidents that could have resulted from compromised industrial systems.

Testing patches before deployment prevents the cure from being worse than the disease. Patches can introduce compatibility issues or performance problems that might be more disruptive than the vulnerability they address. I prefer a staged deployment approach: test environment validation, limited production pilot, and then full deployment. While this approach takes longer, it prevents the service disruptions that often lead organizations to delay patching out of operational concerns.

Automated patch management has transformed what was once an entirely manual process into something more sustainable. Modern tools can assess, deploy, and verify patches across diverse environments with minimal human intervention. I’ve helped organizations implement automated patching programs that significantly increased their overall patch compliance rates. The key is balancing automation with appropriate oversight—fully automated patching for standard workstations and servers, with more controlled processes for critical or sensitive systems.

A comprehensive asset inventory is the foundation of effective vulnerability management. You can’t patch what you don’t know exists. I’ve led discovery initiatives that revealed numerous unmanaged devices—in one case, identifying over 200 systems that weren’t included in the organization’s patching program. Modern network detection tools, asset management systems, and continuous monitoring technologies help maintain accurate inventories despite increasingly dynamic IT environments.

7. Secure Remote Access Solutions

The widespread adoption of remote and hybrid work models has fundamentally altered the security perimeter. We can no longer rely on network boundaries to contain threats—today’s workforce connects from anywhere, often using personal devices on untrusted networks. This expanded attack surface requires a thoroughly reimagined approach to remote access security.

Secure VPN solutions with strong encryption provide a baseline for remote access, but implementation details matter significantly. Split tunneling configurations that only route corporate traffic through the VPN can create security gaps. At Suburbia Labs, we recommend full-tunnel VPN configurations for access to sensitive resources, ensuring all traffic is inspected and protected. This approach prevents potential malware from establishing direct communications that might bypass security monitoring systems.

Zero-trust network access represents the evolution of remote access security, operating on the principle that trust is never implicit but must be continuously verified. This approach validates users, devices, and applications before granting access to specific resources—regardless of network location. Properly implemented zero-trust architectures can significantly reduce attack surfaces while actually improving user experience through contextual access controls that eliminate multiple authentication prompts.

Monitoring remote connections for suspicious activities has become essential as attackers specifically target remote access systems. Unusual connection times, geographic anomalies, and atypical resource access patterns can indicate compromised credentials. Effective monitoring systems can flag these suspicious activities, potentially identifying ransomware attacks in their early stages before encryption begins, allowing security teams to isolate compromised accounts quickly.

Conditional access policies add intelligence to authentication by considering contextual risk factors. These policies might require additional verification when users connect from new locations, unfamiliar devices, or attempt to access particularly sensitive resources. Well-designed conditional access systems can trigger step-up authentication for specific high-value resources, effectively preventing credential-based attacks even when primary credentials are compromised.

Virtual desktop infrastructure provides an additional security layer for sensitive operations by centralized data and applications rather than distributed across endpoints. This approach is particularly valuable for third-party access or when employees need to use personal devices. VDI ensures that intellectual property and sensitive data remain within a controlled environment even when accessed remotely. If an endpoint device is compromised, attackers still cannot access sensitive data because it never leaves the secured virtual environment.

Conclusion

The ransomware incidents affecting Florida government entities provide valuable lessons for all organizations. Florida’s legal prohibition on ransom payments has forced its public sector to develop stronger prevention and recovery capabilities—an approach that ultimately serves them better than the quick but problematic option of paying criminals.

By implementing the prevention strategies outlined above, organizations can significantly reduce their ransomware risk profile and improve their ability to recover quickly if attacked. Remember that ransomware protection is not just about technology—it requires a comprehensive approach involving people, processes, and technology working together.

As attackers continue to evolve their tactics, our defenses must adapt as well. One of the most effective ways to prepare is to learn from those who have already faced these challenges. Check out this guide to learn about protection against ransomware attacks.