Featured Partner Event: Jack Voltaic: City Cyber Incident Exercise

Cyber Florida at USF

The Army Cyber Institute, Cyber Florida, and critical partners will host an immersive, multi-sector cyber exercise that follows a coordinated cyberattack on the Tampa water sector.

Dates: May 18 - 20, 2026

Location: USF Marshall Student Center, Tampa, FL

Jack Voltaic Tampa Objectives:

1. Exercise the City of Tampa and Hillsborough County's abilities to respond to a sophisticated multi-sector, multi-pronged cyber-attack.
2. Assess the ability of state and local public-sector entities to respond to these types of attacks in an already stressed Emergency Management environment.
3. Showcase the City of Tampa and the surrounding counties as emerging national leaders in cybersecurity, particularly cyber incident response.
4. Identify operational impacts for MacDill Air Force Base, US Central Command, and US Special Operations Command in the eventuality of a cyber-attack on the city of Tampa's critical infrastructure.

What is Jack Voltaic®?

United States military installations and their surrounding communities share an interest in the resiliency of cyber-critical infrastructure systems. In addition to civil-military interdependencies, a failure in one critical infrastructure sector can cause cascading effects across others. The Army Cyber Institute (ACI) launched the Jack Voltaic® (JV) initiative to address gaps and build resilience.

Participants:

The Chief of Staff of the City of Tampa, Principal Cyber Advisor to the Secretary of the Army, FBI, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Critical Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)

Florida Digital Service (FLDS), Florida Department of Management Services (DMS), Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE)

Hillsborough County, Pinellas County, Pasco County

City of St. Petersburg, City of Sarasota, City of Oldsmar, City of Lakeland

Tampa Bay Water, TECO Energy, AdventHealth, BayCare Health, Tampa General Hospital, US Water Corporation, Florida Hospital Association, SimSpace

University of South Florida (USF), Norwich University Applied Research Institutes (NUARI), Idaho National Labs (INL)

US Central Command (USCENTCOM), US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM), US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), US Coast Guard (USCG), US Army Reserve, Florida Army National Guard, MacDill Air Force Base, and the Army Cyber Institute 

Jack Voltaic Overview

United States military installations and their surrounding communities share an interest in the resiliency of cyber-critical infrastructure systems. In addition to civil-military interdependencies, a failure in one critical infrastructure sector can cause cascading effects across others. ACI launched the Jack Voltaic (JV) initiative to address gaps and build resilience. Beginning with the first exercise (JV 1.0) in 2016, these exercises addressed multi-sector cyber-critical infrastructure challenges.

• Civil-military
• Local, community level
• Multi-sector
• Unclassified

With each iteration of JV, ACI’s critical infrastructure resilience program will mature and transition. Through partnerships with other academic and policy communities, ACI seeks to foster the growth of JV-inspired practices. Multiple initiatives through 2026 will build upon the momentum and lessons of JV 1.0 - 4.0.

Current Research Efforts

To further explore our current research efforts, please navigate to the hyperlinks below.

1. Building Critical Infrastructure Communities
2. Cyber Critical Infrastructure Exercise Facilitation: The DECIDE Platform
3. Cyber-Critical Infrastructure Game
4. Critical Infrastructure Resilience: Define, Match, Measure, and Enforce
5. Analyzing Pedagogical Effectiveness for Critical Infrastructure Security, Resilience, and Integrated Smart City Training