He clicked over to a security log. "Also, I enabled the Intrusion Prevention System specifically for hospitality threats. There’s a known vulnerability in older hotel key card systems. The FortiGate is already blocking probes from an IP address in Eastern Europe trying to scan for that port."

Two months later, Hurricane Idalia grazed the coast, but a different kind of storm tried to hit The Breakers . A sophisticated phishing email, disguised as an invoice from a linen supplier, reached the front desk manager. She clicked the attachment. Inside was a zero-day exploit.

He pointed to a graph showing live traffic. "See these spikes? That’s the guest Wi-Fi—three hundred people streaming TikTok and checking email. The FortiGate isolates guest traffic from the payment card network using virtual LANs. Even if a guest’s laptop is a zombie botnet, it can’t even see your reservation system."

"Three times in the last hour," Leo said. "They’re trolling for easy targets. Your old firewall would have waved them through. This one just shrugged and dropped their packets into a black hole."