Source: www.techrepublic.com – Author: Megan Crouse
In response to a cyberattack, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz issued an emergency executive order bringing National Guard soldiers to active duty.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has deployed the National Guard to St. Paul following a cyberattack that began on July 25. The National Guard’s cyber protection support personnel will expand the city’s response capacity, Walz said on July 30.
City still investigating scope of breach
The cyberattack began with suspicious activity detected on the city’s internal systems early on Friday morning, according to The Guardian; details have not yet been made public. The attack “targeted critical systems and digital services,” according to Walz’s emergency executive order. Throughout the weekend, the attack prevented St. Paul city personnel from providing vital services, Walz said. Emergency services were not compromised, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter said at a press conference on Tuesday.
According to Carter, the city employed two companies to perform cleanup operations; he did not disclose the names of the companies. Additionally, the city government is working with the FBI on the case, Carter said.
City personnel are continuing to determine what data was accessed and stolen.
Carter recommended city employees to “take precautionary steps to safeguard their digital security, in both their professional and personal lives.”
National Guard called in to bolster cybersecurity response
“Unfortunately, the scale and complexity of this incident exceeded both internal and commercial response capabilities,” Walz wrote in the executive order.
As a result, Walz enacted the executive order to “help address this incident and make sure that vital municipal services continue without interruption.”
St. Paul has not disclosed the details of the National Guard operation. The Guard’s cyber defense teams include soldiers from the Army National Guard trained in vulnerability assessments, defensive cybersecurity operations, intelligence analysis, network management, and other specialties.
“Working closely with state leaders and private cybersecurity experts, our teams quickly moved to investigate, assess, and contain the situation,” Carter said in prepared remarks accessed by The Guardian.
Ransomware threat actors are increasingly targeting organizations’ backup data as part of their attacks, according to a recent Google Cloud report.
Megan Crouse
Megan Crouse has a decade of experience in business-to-business news and feature writing, including as first a writer and then the editor of Manufacturing.net. Her news and feature stories have appeared in Military & Aerospace Electronics, Fierce Wireless, TechRepublic, and eWeek. She copyedited cybersecurity news and features at Security Intelligence. She holds a degree in English Literature and minored in Creative Writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Original Post URL: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/news-st-paul-minnesota-cyberattack-national-guard/
Category & Tags: News,Security – News,Security
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