Okeechobee County Technology Administrator Allen Queen gave a presentation to the Okeechobee City council during the council’s Nov. 19 meeting. He was asked to speak on the subject of information technology, because the city is in the process of hiring an in-house IT person.

One of the main topics of Queen’s discussion involved cyber security, and he said he could not stress strongly enough the importance of staff training in this area. He said that many times, intruders access the system through what appears to be an innocent email that is clicked on by an employee. He said between October of 2022 and September of 2023, the clerk.co.okeechobee.fl.us domain received a total of 536,054 emails. Of that number, 353,652 were valid. 175,206 were spam, and 7,196 contained a link to a virus. This does not include the emails received by the myokeeclerk.com domain.

He asked those in the room if they had a cell phone with them, and everyone held up their hands. He said, “86% of your employees are your threat. I’m not saying they are doing it deliberately, but it’s a proven fact that 86% of what your employees do is probably what is going to cause one of your biggest cyber-security breaches. There are two parts to that. There is the social side of it, and then there’s the innocent side of it. So training is of the utmost importance.”

He told the council that their best strategy would be to teach employees about cyber-threats and accountability, standardize all city technology, enable the best firewall protection and enforce strong and safe passwords.

He told the council he strongly encourages their decision to hire an IT person.  He said he and the seven members of his team completed 4,288 work orders between October 1, 2022 and September 30, 2023. This does not include work they do every day without a work order.

The city is seeking applicants for the IT  technician position. Applications can be found on the city’s website city's website or in person at City Hall.