This is the first time the eight-year-old unit has deployed to an attack on Minnesota computer systems.
Lt. Col. Brian Morgan, the Minnesota National Guard’s director of cyber coordination, said the guard’s involvement was needed because of the complexity of the attack on St. Paul and the urgency of getting city services back online.
“The nature of the attack is very sophisticated,” Morgan said, of the way the attacker, still unnamed, gained access to St. Paul’s systems. “It’s obviously a professional. There’s more to follow on that.”
St. Paul has been dealing with the cyber attack, which was detected Friday. The city has shut down many of its internet systems to keep the attack from spreading and as a result some services have been disrupted.
Morgan said he sees it as critical to get city services back online quickly. Though St. Paul has analog backups for many systems, including the city payroll, Morgan said he wanted to see the attack contained and city services restored quickly.
The specialized unit’s members have “decades” of training and experience in IT in their civilian careers, Morgan said, as well as training from the military in cybersecurity.
“Cyber forces don’t deploy to these missions with any sort of weapon aside from their brain,” he said.
